2023-2024 PRESCHOOL

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LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR FUNDAMENTALS

Art Zone for Preschool was designed by child development specialist, Laura Krug, MA. to offer an exciting arts and play based experience for your kids to love.  Laura Krug holds her MA in Educational Psychology with a specialization in early childhood education.

Art Zone for Preschool provides your child with four hours of Art-Play, our exciting & fun arts-based curriculum we developed here at Art Zone. Art-Play is messy art & play plus daily teacher-guided lessons matched to your child’s development growth and interests. Art-Play includes guided play, free play, fort play, rough & tumble play, dance play, group play, painting play, clay play, gluey play, water play, building play, light/shadow play, paper play and a “Hundred Languages”[1] of play.

Our highest aim is that your child will have fun here.

Why is fun and creativity so important? Creativity is everyone’s birthright and play is fundamental at Art Zone for Preschool. Art-Play is a profoundly intelligent way to grow a human person and attach them to the world! What makes Art-Play so valuable is that it is informed by emerging, exciting science of human development as we form and craft play experiences for children. Art-Play curriculum is delivered in an empathetic, non-coercive environment, with clear and firm boundaries.[2] We play mindful gratitude games to plant your child’s high self-esteem firmly in the ground. Art Zone for Preschool nurtures a sense of belonging, connectedness, and predictability by building playful relationships. The Art-Play approach we developed at Art Zone promotes a growth mindset[3] to imbue children with a sense of their own self-determination and efficacy. Art-Play wakes-up and grows all parts of the brain in an integral way connecting to mind, body, and emotions.

Through exciting play activities, Art Zone helps your child build empathy skills to connect them to the global world and support development of an anti-bias, socially just awareness. For this purpose, our Art-Play curriculum is mindful to promote self-care, friendship-care, earth-care, and all-people-care. The practice of empathy is the magic that binds us all together. Empathy, purpose, and creativity are the currency of the future. Being truly understood, listened to and heard, then allows us to listen, hear, and seek creative ways to understand others.  Through fun and exciting stories, songs, dance, art activities, ideas, histories, heroes, and play, we practice empathy for all individual rights and feelings, together with an understanding of collectivist perspectives, experiences and responsibilities. “The human brain and heart that are met primarily with empathy in the critical years, cannot and will not grow to choose a violent or selfish life. . . When we parent the child, we parent the world.”[4]

Results can be seen, heard, touched and felt here at Art Zone. From the moment your child settles in, you can see her become engaged, secure, energetic, playful, and creative. The relationship building has begun. Their insides come out as kids express themselves in sometimes strange and often silly ways. Preschool play is often infused with lively behaviors kept safe with kind guidance from staff. Chaos and conflict will arise, and our staff will greet these situations as necessary with intelligence, calm, and emotionally connecting interactions. We invented the nonverbal “magic-repair-care game” to restore connections temporarily interrupted by ruptures and misunderstandings.

Because fun and joyful learning are intrinsic to your child, they are the most powerful motivators and produce long-term lasting results.[5] How fun is that!

References————————————————

[1] “Hundred Languages of Children,” Edwards, Gandini, Forman

[2] The Echo Approach as defined by www.EchoParenting.org

[3] “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” Carol Dweck.

[4] “Parenting for a Peaceful World,”  Robin Grille.

[5] Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bibes,” Alfie Kohn