Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program
 Students from Settlement Music School's Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program . |
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Photo:
ARAMARK
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The tuition-free preschool program provides comprehensive education, music, art, and dance to 60 preschool children, operating 40 weeks a year, September through June, five days a week, 8 AM to 2:45 PM.
Kaleidoscope's principal goal is to prepare preschoolers for academic success. The program's approach to learning recognizes that whereas adults are "screeners," simultaneously absorbing and selecting relevant details, preschool children are "scanners" with a need to explore and examine actively all aspects of an experience, an object, or a concept. Arts education provides the greatest scope for this kind of learning. To reflect that understanding in its preschool activities, Kaleidoscope brought together artists and educators to develop their own arts-infused curriculum. Working with a faculty of professional artists with training in early childhood education, small groups of children go to the arts studios six to nine times a week to explore concepts that cut across the arts: pattern, change, repetition and extremes. They also are taught specific skills, such as in music: keeping a steady beat, staying on pitch, recognizing rudimentary notation and understanding the proper physical approach to an instrument. To reinforce preschool learning, children's parents or guardians are required to attend a number of parenting seminars each semester.
| Kaleidoscope
Preschool Arts Enrichment Program Settlement Music School 416 Queen Street PO Box 25120 Philadelphia, PA 19147-3094 Phone: 215-336-0400 Fax: 215-551-0483 Focus: Dance, Music, Visual Arts Number Participating: 60 Ages: 3-5 Annual Budget: $460,000 Evaluations reveal that Kaleidoscope children make sustained gains in cognitive and language development above and beyond those evidenced in a control group of preschoolers without the arts-enriched curriculum. An interview with Kaleidoscope Preschool Arts Enrichment Program at: http://www.kidscampaigns.org/hot/arts/capanna.html |