News

  • Mountain Yard Celebrates World Cultural Traditions

    Our Mountain Yard curriculum encompasses many areas, including anti-bias activities that inculcate an appreciation of ethnic and cultural traditions. For instance, during late October/early November we honored the Mexican tradition of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

  • A Must See Talk: Dr. Peter Gray on The Decline of Play

    At Play Mountain Place play is highly valued. In this talk, Dr. Peter Gray documents why free play is essential for children’s healthy social and emotional development and outlines steps through which we can bring free play back into children’s lives.  

  • Mississippi River Flood Plan

    Upper Elementary was on their end of the year trip and Primary and Elementary group were in the yard. The Mississippi River had yet to peak, and there had been much flooding along it’s banks. The premise of my plan was to learn in a practical sense about the flooding along the Mississippi river.

  • Finding and Mapping Treasures – Mapping II

    I have had a series of Thursday classes based around cartography. After having led a few successful classes based in the children making maps that were personal to their experience, perspective, and imagination, I wanted to attempt a mapping and graphing project that involved team work and problem solving. I decided to create a project around finding and mapping treasures, somewhat like an archeology dig.

  • Cartography Class – Mapping

    I wanted to bring awareness to where we live in context to the bigger world around us as well as bringing spatial relationships between here and the greater world. I noticed some students didn’t have a concept between city and state. I started talking about the neighborhood and the children narrowed the idea down, all the way to the location of their heart.

  • Literacy at Play Mountain Place

    As a PMP teacher, I have received questions from parents over the years about how students learn to read and write at Play Mountain Place. PMP parents sometimes feel that because children make their own choices about how they construct their day, that perhaps the fundamentals of reading and writing are bypassed. What I can say is that learning to read and write is a very personal process at Play Mountain.

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