Our Program

At Play Mountain Place, the learning process is self-directed. Children have control over the direction of their education and are at the center of their own learning process. Learning is bound to a child’s interest, and organically generated from that interest. Curriculum offerings by teachers are primarily “hands on,” experiential and developmentally appropriate for each age group. Our program is rich with opportunities, both child-initiated and teacher-offered, but all are choices, and no curriculum plans are compulsory.

This type of education preserves the desire to learn and helps children gain experience in finding their way to the information they need. When interest and experience meet information, the knowledge children gain is deep and lasting. Through their active engagement in their own interests, children learn skills and concepts and master the process of learning.

Much like Britain’s Summerhill School, children can choose from both student led activities and teacher-offered curriculum without being required to participate in either. A child’s inner pace of both cognitive and social emotional development is honored. Trust is given to his or her choices. Children are not pressured — whether it is about transitioning out of diapers, sharing a toy or learning to read. By allowing a wide range of choices and behaviors, experiential learning is fostered.

Phyllis Fleishman, Carl Rogers and A.S. Neill believed in what Rogers called “experiential learning” – the act of playing and doing. Rogers felt that by addressing the needs and wants of the learner, a student’s self-conscious control over initiating, planning, organizing and carrying out activities is encouraged. To this end, Play Mountain cultivates education as a process, not a product. Skills development (verbal communication, reading, writing, math, science, arts, etc.) become the child’s desired means to further learning, not an end to themselves. The school strives not to impose adult educational expectations on children or to demand that they acquire skills at a certain rate. In addition, since we do not want children to associate learning with coercion, anxiety or boring rote, we do not use rewards, punishments, grades or tests.

These education principles are not born of blind faith in our humanistic philosophy or in theoretical understandings of educators. Over sixty years of experience has shown us that they work.

Children at Play Mountain learn far more than the “Three R’s.” They learn to live fully and joyfully in the world, with a deep understanding of who they are, what they are interested in, and a profound respect for others. Students here are creative, self-motivated problem-solvers with an abiding curiosity about the world and, they become equipped with all the tools they will need for a lifetime of continued learning.

“In the end, the secret to learning is so simple. Think only about whatever you love. Follow it, do it, dream about it-and it will hit you – learning was there all the time, happening by itself.”

-Grace Llewellyn

Children possess a natural curiosity about the world around them. When children explore and play, they are following their natural instincts to feed that curiosity and make sense of the world around them. At Play Mountain Place, children are given space and time to focus on learning about our world through play. When children are free to pursue their own interests through play, they can gain knowledge and learn many skills.

Through play, children gain self-direction and self-motivation. They experience what it’s like to make plans, set their own goals and solve their own problems. Children become more self-reliant and self-assured when they are in charge of their own learning process.

Through play, children gain freedom and autonomy. They are able to take more initiative and rely less on adults and teachers to show them “the right way.”

Play involves cooperation and negotiation, because if other children are unhappy, the game will end. Children have to learn to navigate varying social situations in order to keep their games going.

Play is used by children to make sense of their world. Anything that a child is trying to understand or is processing will be shown through his/her play. In order to play together children must learn to understand their own emotions and the emotions of their playmates.

Play can encompass a wide range of subjects, including but not limited to: math (when children are weighing objects, counting friends or pouring water), literacy (writing notes, looking at books or hearing stories being read), science (mixing ingredients, floating objects, observing nature), and history (telling stories about their family, sharing important parts of their lives and drawing themselves or people they love).

Through play, children may also develop qualities and skills such as: curiosity; creativity; critical thinking; collaboration; courage; empathy; conflict resolution; compassion; enthusiasm; self-expression of ideas, feelings, and needs; a strong sense of self and tolerance of differences.

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

– Fred Rogers

The humanistic learning environment is positive, enriching, psychologically whole and nourishing.

The teachers at Play Mountain Place create a space for students where there is a deep respect for each individual, open communication, a concentration on the needs and feelings of learners, and a liberating quality. They respect the learner’s individuality, self-determination, capacity for making their own choices, and humanness. They strive to create an environment where children feel safe to be their authentic selves, and encourage the empowerment of children by treating them with respect and by listening to their ideas and feelings with empathy, openness, and non-judgement.

On a daily basis, Play Mountain teachers also model another tenet that the school adopted from Carl Rogers: the idea of “unconditional positive regard.”

The child is seen unconditionally as a positive being and is treated with genuineness and empathic understanding.

“If we value independence, if we are disturbed by the growing conformity of knowledge, of values, of attitudes, which our present system induces, then we may wish to set up conditions of learning which make for uniqueness, for self-direction, and for self-initiated learning.”

– Carl Rogers

At Play Mountain, children are encouraged to express all their feelings. Teachers help them find safe outlets for anger, fear, jealousy and sadness.

Tending to the child’s heart, as well as the head, children are encouraged to express thoughts and feelings freely and without judgment. All feelings are seen as “OK.” Indeed, repression of feelings often leads to greater problems later, which further complicate the child’s education and interpersonal relationships. All feelings are treated as a healthy, necessary part of life. Teachers are trained to help children find safe physical, verbal and creative outlets for their emotions.

Teachers also use non-authoritarian methods for assisting children in the conflict resolution process and in finding their own solutions to problems.

A problem between children presents a teachable moment and an opportunity to experience both freedom and responsibility. By learning to “work it out,” children develop personal responsibility as well as respect for others. Many visitors to the school comment on the apparent “maturity” of the children, the confident ease with which they interact with each other and adults. Attention to one’s own feelings, learning to accept others feelings and limits, and learning to tolerate differences and resolve conflicts in a way in which everyone is heard and in agreement, are the keys to this dimension of education at Play Mountain Place.

“If you want your children to really talk to you, then you must focus on their feelings and not confuse them with your facts.”

– Phyllis Fleishman

At Play Mountain Place, children are playing, but they are also choosing to spend time enjoying some of the plans that are offered by the teachers. At the Nursery level, teachers provide a rich environment full of developmentally appropriate activities that help build a child’s skills. At the Elementary school level, teachers begin to offer more classes and students and teachers collaborate on the content of many classes.

Within the plans and classes at both the Nursery and Elementary level, there are many opportunities to talk about typical school subject matter, concepts and relationships. It is the teachers’ responsibility to plan a program that is inclusive of a wide range of subjects from science and nature to arts and music, the social sciences and standard subjects of reading, writing, and math.

“Children who are allowed to make their own choices, in an environment where they have real choices and where those choices pertain to real life, learn far more, far more efficiently, than children who are forced to follow a curriculum that seems irrelevant to them.”

-Peter Gray