Mountain Village School News

Next weekend is our biggest family event of the year: the Stick Season Social! We are very excited to be holding it at MVS this year, and once again Chad Hollister will be joining us to play some funky acoustic dancing tunes. Chad is a Vermont musician who has opened for Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Paul Simon, among others. Fresh off a July album release, his performance is sure to be a treat. This event has been in the works for a long time thanks to the hard work of our Parent Collaboration Committee as well as many teachers and community members, and now it's finally here. Come join us! You won't be disappointed. We also wanted to share that this past week Sarah attended a "Train the Trainer" session at the headquarters of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) in Washington, D.C. The focus of the session was developmentally appropriate practices for young children. The NAEYC website provides this definition of developmentall

If you've ever seen an infant with paper then you know that Mr. Hawkins has a point there! Infants can spend quite a while exploring any type of paper's particular properties, from how it feels, to how it crumples and what that sounds like, to how it floats through the air when you drop it–properties that we grown-ups tend to just fly by. In many ways art for young children continues in this vein; it is important both as a multi-faceted sensory experience and as an emergent means of expression. We use the term "process art" to describe our approach. The emphasis is on how children choose to interact with the materials provided, rather than on any particular end-product. There is no example provided and teachers do not make comments about whether children's work is "good" or "bad" or "right". Instead, the experience usually evolves as children make discoveries, experiment creatively, and ask questions, and they are finished when th