Overview

The teachers at Snow Lion School actively encourage:

Sensory Awareness, Curiosity, and Development of Natural Intelligence

Through our senses we learn about the world. For young children, the development of sensory awareness leads to a greater depth of relationship to and understanding of oneself and one’s environment. When children are connected to their senses their curiosity seems to thrive. When children are curious their attention span and focus increases and stabilizes without effort. With increased focus, children become more perceptive and able to arrive at increasingly subtler levels of understanding. Greater perceptiveness leads to a greater manifestation of each child’s natural intelligence. Sensory awareness is encouraged through use of natural materials, sensory play, movement, and time spent outdoors.

Joyful Discipline

We want all children to be familiar with the freedom and confidence that come from a joyful sense of discipline. This freedom and joy comes from being responsible for one’s actions, from seeing activities through from beginning to end, and from having the ability to be self-contained. We want children to experience self-discipline not as tedious, but as a practice that provides opportunities for them to be independent and to make their own choices.

Meaningful Experiences

Play is children’s work. Children are natural learners and are intrinsically motivated toward discovery. Through a play-based curriculum, children can be lead towards experiences that will deepen and expand their sense of meaning in the world. Children are given the space to observe, wander, and take in the environment without being pressured to constantly engage in activities.

Comfort With Diversity

Different people have different ways of thinking, different abilities, values, personalities, styles, preferences, choices, strengths, and weaknesses. We want children to understand that there are many ways of being in the world, and to be comfortable with these differences. We welcome each other’s qualities, including those that are difficult and encourage children to explore all they are, as well as embrace the differences of others.

Compassion and Loving Kindness for All Beings

Children are naturally connected to their hearts and therefore able to connect deeply to others. We actively encourage this quality by allowing the children the opportunity to connect with each other in happy times and sad times, by being conscious of and kind towards the other creatures around us, and by maintaining an atmosphere of respect and dignity in the environment. We honor this sense of compassion as the diamond of all qualities and the heart of all we do.