Children's education is supported through community events and experiences. The expertise we are provided with through the exploration of our community is an integral part of our program. We feel very fortunate to be part of a community that offers us many opportunities to plan collaborative activities for the children. Our field trips provide the children with the opportunity to experience the culture of our surrounding community as we promote the Reggio belief that "teachers, family and community are interactive and together build the foundation for children's natural inquiry". These provocations lead the way to meaningful discussions and projects.
Community service projects and events have become a tradition at the Studio. Each event has a clear purpose related to helping those in our community that need our support. Our annual events include but are not limited to; The St Jude's Children's Research Hospital Trike-a- thon, Muscular Dystrophy Hop-a-thon, Holiday gift collection, Thanksgiving food drive, and our annual Holiday Market Day fund raiser for St. John’s Soup Kitchen. The teachers facilitate discussions and use the community projects to reflect on problem solving skills with the children. We encourage the children to understand how their participation in each event can "help others" in very real ways. We believe in the children's capacity to sustain a habit of compassion if we begin at an early age by offering meaningful opportunities in a safe environment.
This year's Christmas Market was held on Saturday, December 3rd from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. How do we describe this year's Market? How about SPECTACULAR. The weather was great, the turnout was excellent, and we had so many families and friends participating in all our activities.
Our thanks to everyone for all the generous donations of items for our raffles, and who helped us at this year's event. We could never pull off such a significant community service effort without all our wonderful Children's Studio families and Staff. Thanks for supporting our school's community service mission!
Our entire staff was ready with an array of arts and crafts. The choice of designs for face painting were endless!
