Lucy School Presents: Integrating the Arts into the Early Childhood Curriculum:
A Powerful Medium for Young Children August 5 -9, 2013 Relax, Recreate and Learn this Summer Spend five delicious summer days in the cool tranquility of a 17 acre farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains and the stimulation of a state-of-the-art arts-based school and teacher training center. Download the Registration Form. During this week-long participatory retreat,
Sarah Pleydell and Victoria Brown, two master teacher/artists will help you: - Attain academic goals and standards through arts-based teaching strategies
- Which promote social and emotional development and motivate learning
- Awaken the artistic educator in yourself
Teachers will discover how to: - Integrate the arts as a dynamic learning medium for children that accommodates curricular demands while nurturing the need for play and active learning
- Integrate sign language and other multisensory experiences
- Adapt arts activities to accommodate and integrate children with special needs
- Use the arts as an holistic approach to maximize learning throughout the curriculum
Why the Arts? For all children, at all ability levels, the arts play a central role in cognitive, motor, language, and social-emotional development. The arts motivate and engage children in learning, stimulate memory and facilitate understanding, enhance symbolic communication, promote relationships, and provide an avenue of building competence. Young Children and the Arts: Making Creative Connections Children emerge as communicators, problem solvers and humanitarians through holistic experiences. The arts provide a unique multi-dimensional medium for early learning. Drama, movement, dance, music and visual arts communicate to young children in their own language - the language of make-believe. Their curiosity is stirred, questions arise, ideas are shared, and language is expanded and practiced. What's more, when children participate in creative arts activities infused with literacy, their interest in and awareness of reading and reading-related activities increases. Finally, young children learn through the arts because they are participatory and fun! Program. Through multisensory hands-on arts experiences in drama, creative movement, music, and visual arts, participants will experience the rich linguistic and cognitive potential of using the arts as a learning medium. We will work largely with children's literature, exploring how the arts may be used to deepen student's understanding of plot, character and theme. Along the way we will pause to analyze key strategies and techniques for transferring and broadening this work in the teachers' own classrooms. Classes will take place in Lucy School's large gathering room in a magnificently renovated barn overlooking scenic Willow Tree Pond. Classes will meet 9:00 AM - 4:00 PM on Monday- Friday, August 5 -9, 2013. Instructors, Victoria Brown, Ph.D. and Sarah Pleydell, M.F.A. have over fifty years hands-on teaching experience integrating the arts into the early childhood curriculum. They are co-authors of the award-winning book The Dramatic Difference: Drama in the Preschool and Kindergarten Classroom (2000), Heinemann Press. For more than twenty years they have presented keynote addresses and conducted master workshops at conferences nationwide for the National Head Start Bureau, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the American Alliance for Theatre and Education and Wolf Trap's Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts. Sarah is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Maryland and Victoria is founder and director of Lucy School: An Arts Based School (pre-school through fifth grade) and Teacher Training Center in Middletown, MD. Have you noticed how much satisfaction children get through engaging a parent in their play? And how an astute parent can use occasions of heightened imagination subtly to drop in extra information, extend the range of vocabulary, or pose a problem? Victoria Brown and Sarah Pleydell have developed a pedagogic style that harnesses this special child/parent teaching moment by establishing that the teacher is a necessary part of the class' dramatic invention.
Gavin Bolton, Professor at Victoria University in British Colombia. Lucy School. Serving children from birth to age nine and adults who care for young children, Lucy School's mission is to develop, teach and promote creative arts methodology and practices --- drama, creative movement, dance, puppetry, music and visual arts --- that will stimulate and enhance the intellectual, emotional, physical, social, aesthetic and creative development of young children. Lucy School offers workshops & training seminars for teachers, administrators, child-care practitioners, artists and parents. Credit. Teachers completing this intensive course may receive up to three (3) Maryland Department of Education (MSDE) Continuing Education Credits (CPE). Teachers taking the course for MSDE/CPE credit are required to participate fully in all class sessions and to complete a written assignment. Lodging. For out of town participants, a limited amount of lodging is available at the Lucy School Farmhouse, a 19th century farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Registration Information. Registration forms will be accepted by mail or fax on a first come, first served basis. Registration will be confirmed by email or phone within one week of receipt. Full payment (by check or money order) should be included with the registration form. Tuition (includes lunches and book): $ 540 (registration prior to June 1, 2013). Tuition increases to $575 for registrations received after this date.
Lodging (5 nights)¦ Single: $200. Shared, per person: $150 Cancellation with a full refund (minus a $20.00 application fee) may be requested prior to July 15. The Lucy School retains the right to cancel this workshop if there is not a sufficient number registered. Applicants will receive a full refund in this case. | 
