Early Childhood

This is an overview workshop of structures that may be used to provide arts-based expressions of understanding in all curricular areas. The teachers’ ability to reach students of varied learning styles and capabilities will be enhanced, while the divergent thinking required for students to make meaning in multiple ways will be promoted through the implementation of these ideas. This work is accessible for all types of teachers, and will provide assessment tools suited to these experiential modes of learning.

Differentiation is the ongoing challenge of every classroom teacher.  This workshop will provide creativity-based mechanisms to add to your differentiation toolbox, allowing for students with a wider range of learning styles to successfully understand and express their understandings in your classroom.

Creative, critical thinking is the hallmark of good education.  This workshop will focus on simple ways to add creative structures to your current planning.  This is experientially based work that can be used in multiple curricular areas.  Promote complex thinking while adding lots of creative fun to your classroom!

Creative, critical thinking is the hallmark of good education.  This workshop will focus on simple ways to add creative structures to your current planning  for teaching science objectives. Using experiential strategies for teaching science curriculm, we will promote complex thinking while adding lots of creative fun to your classroom!

World cultures have much to offer the Early Childhood classroom.  We will learn to use songs and games from all over the world to support emergent literacy and developmental domains, as well as to serve specific classroom functions.  These joyous games that children have played for hundreds of years support brain function in ways that our technological generation of children do not experience, while enriching our experience of ourselves as members of the wider global community.

Movement and sound use the child’s natural affinities to develop the physical and mental capacities needed for educational and life challenges.  In this workshop, we’ll explore devices and structures that playfully engage the young child in this way, and are accessible to all early childhood educators.

In this workshop, we’ll work together to increase the effectiveness of stories in the curriculum.  We’ll use “story weaving” techniques to enhance creativity and understanding in writing, social studies, math, drama, and visual art.  Assessment tools will be included, as well as techniques for accommodating varying entry points.

Literacy is a basic building block of all learning, and for children that struggle in this area, often all of schooling is frustrating and difficult.  In this workshop, we will move literacy goals into the realms of sound and rhythm, making them accessible to many of these struggling learners.  Building on rhythmic fluency can support fluency in reading, poetry, and writing, and build a bridge to more traditional forms of expression.

Movement and sound use the child’s natural affinities to develop the physical and mental capacities needed for educational and life challenges.  In this workshop, we’ll explore devices and structures that playfully engage the young child in this way, and are accessible to all early childhood educators.