Mountain Village School News

Resources for Infant Educarers, RIE RIE  is the philosophy we following regarding our care and education of infants. The philosophy does carry on with the older children and we follow the same practices as the children get older. RIE was developed by Magda Gerber. She was originally from Hungary. She spent time working and learning from Emmi Pikler. Emmi Pikler was a pediatrician who opened a home, called Loczy, after World War II for children who had lost their parents. While running Loczy Dr. Pikler develop a system of care that provided the children with healthy attachments to their caregivers. These children were followed for many years after leaving Loczy to see if their attachment and emotional health was as stable as children who had been raised at home with their own families. Over the years of following the children that lived at Loczy, they found no discernable difference between those children and the control group. Due to the type of care provided, the children o...

We had a parent potluck this Thursday evening. We talked about Early MTSS, which is a grant we are part of for this school year in our PreK classrooms. We introduced families to the basic outline of the program and the goals. It is based on the Pyramid Model which focuses on having healthy and strong teachers and reflective and nurturing relationships to begin with. The goal is to for our program to have a stronger social-emotional curriculum that supports children's abilities to self-regulate, express their feelings and needs, and recognize how to handle challenging situations. We also watched a great video with Dr. Daniel Siegel describing a brain model . It's a good way for us to share with children how we are feeling when we get frustrated or lose control. We discussed how the model is for children a bit older than the ones in our classroom but we have ways of adapting so that they can understand. We also had a parent association meeting after the potluck. In...

Reminder: We are closed this Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Another reminder about safe foods for children under 2. We ask that you do not send the following foods for children under 2: pretzels, popcorn, raw carrots, nuts, or whole grapes. These foods are all choking hazards and we try to be as careful as possible. Thanks!  As many of you know, we have group snack in our three older classrooms. Families bring snack once per month for the whole class. It has worked out really well for everyone. The children are very excited to when it's their turn to bring in snack and are proud to show off what they made. It has also created a wonderful sense of community in the classroom when the children are all sharing the same snack. We have conversations about new foods and it makes it very easy for others to try new foods.  We wanted to share some great snack ideas:  This week one classroom ate kiwi cut in half. We even tried the skin! Some...

Early childhood education, while incredibly important, is a struggle in our small state of Vermont. It is a struggle for families to find and afford high-quality care. It is a struggle for programs to reach or maintain high-quality status due to the lack of funding available. Programs rely on tuition to cover the costs and our budgets are not big enough to pay for everything. There has been a lot of attention paid to these issues over the past couple of years.  Let's Grow Kids  has done a lot of research on the importance of high-quality early childhood care as well as the development of children during the first few years of life. The work that is done in an early childhood program, supporting children's learning and development, has a lasting effect on children. We take our work seriously here at Mountain Village School. It takes dedication, commitment, and a lot of patience. We are constantly working on educating ourselves more, reflecting on our daily work, discussing ne...