Art Beast Children's Studio

Happy First day of Winter break !!!

Screen time breaks give us a chance to create Today we celebrate friendship, and the changing of seasons.

We are excited to share the news of our newest, and long awaited, program. The Village fills a gap that has existing far too long in our community's shelter system. Help us get the Village on its feet this Giving Tuesday!

What a year! Not only did Covid amplify the need for support and housing for youth and chidlren in our community, it shut down the income generators that help sustain our work. With the closing of programs and cancellation of our fundraising festival, Waking the Village lost over $60,000 in essential revenue. We hope you will consider helping us not only survive, but grow to meet the increased need for housing and support within Sacramento's youth community.

Our school age program has expanded its hours! We offer care from 7:50 am to 5:30 pm daily, offering full time and part time options. We support distance learning for children engaged in online learning with their elementary schools, while ensuring the day includes lots of movement, play, community, and learning. Each child has their own desk and safe space while distance learning, and when exploring Art Beast's many play spaces we are all masked up and using the safest possible practice. Learn more about our schedules here: https://www.artbeaststudio.com/school-age-program

It is a beautiful fall day to learn and create!

So grateful to be ending another week with our fabulous Art Beast kiddos. They have been adapting to distant learning so well. The growth and development we have seen in them both in the classroom, and amongst their peers is absolutely amazing ! Navigating the world of distant learning is not easy for anyone- but these kindergarten and first graders are adapting to the times with grace, focus, and positive attitudes. We are confident that when they return to the classroom, they will be more prepared than ever. Our school age program offers the unique opportunity for kids to see other navigate the distant learning world, while also offering the opportunity for community, creativity, movement, and play! We are so grateful for the smiles, laughs, and friendships being made.

What a joy to throw the doors back open! Our new licensed care program for school age children welcomed a sweet community of elementary students, many navigating their first days of kindergarten. In the mornings, each child engaged with distance learning as our teachers offered support, encouragement, and heart pumping breaks. Once the screens went down, it was all PLAY and CREATING and FRIENDSHIP. The right now may be hard, but we are determined to claim the joy still lingering.

We are beyond excited to welcome children into our new licensed care program tomorrow! Each child will be greeted with their own toolkit, outfitted for the work of play and creativity.

Big thanks to Girl Scout Troop 317 who devoted their Silver Award Project to uplifting the Art Beast courtyard. They painted our tables, varnished our mud kitchen, schlepped a lot of rock and sand in the heat, created a new awning, and created a space for children that is welcoming and invites play. Our gratitude to these future leaders!

Art Beast Studio is excited to be welcoming children into its new licensed care program! We are offering full and part time care to children, and designing the day to support both children engaged with distance learning and those who are not. With enrollment capped at 20 children, we encourage interested families to enroll soon. The program will be lead by an experienced and credentialed teacher who embraces the arts and creativity in building community and meaningful days. https://madmimi.com/s/9e81311

Enrollment is open for Art Beast's Licensed School Age Program for school age children up to 8 years old beginning Fall 2020. Part and full time care options are available. This will be a small program serving no more than 20 children. https://www.artbeaststudio.com/school-age-program

Waking the Village will be offering three, small licensed programs for kinder age children this Fall. Follow the link at the bottom of this post to get on the e...mail list for enrollment details. Art Beast Studio, at 2226 K Street in midtown, will be offering an environment offering creative play and community to drive learning and exploration. Only the children enrolled in the school age program, and the teachers, will be in the environment. We will cap enrollment at twenty children, creating two pods of ten children that will use different spaces within the building. We have been painting, putting in new flooring, and re-creating the space to offer safe community. We hope to return to offering drop in play in the future, but for the current time we are licensing for drop off care. www.artbeaststudio.com Muck and Wonder Farm School, at 1949 Bell Street, will be offering an outdoor school where children engage with the gardens, outdoor play and learning, goats, and nature. Located on an acre of land, the outdoor setting ensures maximum ventilation while the indoor play environment allows occasional breaks from the elements. Muck and Wonder will also be capping at 16 to 20 children. www.muckandwonderfarmschool.com Art Beast Child Development Center, located at 47th Avenue and 44th Street, will be offering half and full day programs for elementary age children. The program will center learning around play, exploration, and safe interaction as a community. It shares space with our preschool, but will have a dedicated, very large, separate classroom. We will be capping the program at 15 to 20 children. www.artbeastcdc.com During the current pandemic, we give constant energy to ensuring the safety of our staff and the children attending our programs. Daily, we assess environments, latest information, and screening details- and make the decisions needed to maximize safety. Our strategy for mitigating risk centers on six principles: 1. Reduce the number of people sharing space and create environments that facilitate physical distancing, especially during activities of greatest risk of spread. Organize children into pods of ten or less and have siblings stay together. 2. Use hand washing, mask or shield wearing, and sanitizing surfaces to reduce the presence of the virus. We have invested in air purifiers and in the sanitizing equipment used by airlines and hotels to ensure maximum sanitizing. 3. Screen children daily upon arrival and communicate daily with families to maintain each family's commitment to avoiding activities that lead to exposure. Communicate immediately with all families when potential exposure is discovered. 4. Structure environments to maximize air flow and ventilation, reduce shared objects and touched surfaces, and define organic forms to physically distance while remaining socially connected. 5. Develop in children resilience by developing a passion for tending to their community and their world through acts of mindful mitigation and a commitment to ground rules we use to keep another safe. We believe love, laughter, and community can still thrive in a pandemic. 6. Respond to the latest information from Sacramento Public Health, CDC, WHO, state licensing, and all credible science and news sources to develop optimal strategies to avoid spread until a vaccine is found. Interested? Next week we will share more details and enrollment processes. Complete this form to get on the email list and share feedback. https://forms.gle/CktVr1PznveLh8om6

Lots of big updates for Art Beast! We are in the licensing process to provide school age care starting in September. This will allow us to offer after school care to elementary children 5 days a week. However, during the pandemic and school closures, we are launching a small program for 20 kinder age children (ages 5 to 7). Our program will offer children a huge dose of joy, creative play, and community in the safest way possible for those who don't have the option to stay ho...me. These 20 children will be the only people in the building until the world is safer. Each child will have a dedicated toolkit full of art and creating supplies. Environments are being redesigned to minimize shared touched objects, while ramping sanitizing way up for those surfaces that are touched frequently. Electrostatic sanitizing will be used to ensure all sides of surfaces are sanitized daily. Outdoor sinks will expand hand washing options. The children will be divided into two pods to minimize the number of social contacts within the day and parents will drop off children at the door. All will be masked. All will be screened daily for fever and symptoms. We will use yoga, rhythm games, and dance to integrate plenty of movement. Children will use individually dedicated yoga mats, percussive instruments, and play silks to reduce sharing of items. Our teachers will tailor the program to meet the needs of the children. We will slyly work in some school readiness skills but only in the most joyful way. We will also ensure plenty of time for child directed play and create daily discovery stations to explore science, math, and literacy concepts. As always, our passion for processed based learning will lead. While closed, we have taken all carpet out and put in new flooring. We've repainted and uplifted. Much of what was dear to children will still be there with a bit of new worked in. While Art Beast has been closed, our agency's preschools have been open. While we stay humble in the face of a worldwide pandemic and a virus that seems to offer new surprises weekly, we have been reassured that our protocols have kept children, staff, their families, and our families safe. We bring these same protocols into our new Art Beast program. We will remain vigilant and continue to strong communication and transparency with the families enrolling in our programs. We have not decided yet if we will offer a full time program or a half day program. We will in the week ahead. We'd love to hear from interested families what you are looking for. The survey at this link will help us keep you informed when enrollment begins, and allow us to hear your hopes for the program: https://forms.gle/16CfaNbTwQYTZiZf9 The survey also mentions the options for our other programs at Muck and Wonder Farm School and Art Beast Child Development School which are offering options as well.

Muck and Wonder is offering a 12 week camp series for twelve children. Summer on the Farm is for children 4 to 7 years old. Running from 9 to 3 each day, we will keep children safe by reducing group size and using best practices to avoid spread, while still building a sweet community of friends that spend the day outside with goats, gardens, and all sorts of creating. Muck and Wonder is a sister program to Art Beast. Until Monday, registration is limited to families committing to the whole series with a substantial discount so encourage the formation of a small, consistent group of children.

New project share from one of our fabulous Art Beast volunteers, Ms Lily (she is a high school student who lead a super fun class at Art Beast earlier this year among other things) check out her super cool project for families making a nature suncatcher! "Hey Art Beast family! This is Ms. Lily, can’t wait to work with you all again. But in the meantime, here are some super simple and fun crafts you can do at home to pass the time! Have fun and get creating!" How to Make a Fl...ower Sun Catcher Materials needed: -paper, I used a spare paper bag I had at home -transparent tape or plastic wrap (I found plastic wrap works best but either is fine!) -glue -any flowers or plants you can find! Steps: 1. Gather your materials and cut your paper in strips. This will be your border, it can be as small or as big as you want! Glue the strips in a square or diamond shape. Get creative! 2. Grab your plastic wrap or tape and place on top of the border you made. 3. This is the fun part! Go outside and pick your desired flowers and leaves you want to make a design with. Once you have an assortment, place them within your border. 4. Press your flowers! Now you will take more tape or plastic wrap to preserve your design 5. Seal off with tape or glue! 6. This step is optional. Punch a hole in the border and line with a string. Now you can hang your suncatcher near a window or in your room! Have fun! Here is a video showing how to make the suncatcher, https://youtu.be/PuRGG0O4px0 And another site that I really like that shows how to make origami! https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/top-origami-for-beginners-2 Bye! Ms Lily

Today, Sacramento SHATTERED all previous Big DOG totals. In a time when Sacramento folk has every reason to be a bit more selfish and self-serving, they did the opposite. They stood up for the vulnerable- the many, many nonprofits fighting for our youth to have homes, for birds fallen from nests to be nurtured, for choirs to keep singing, for our rivers to be protected, for our elders to be nourished, and for 615 good hearted agencies to get up tomorrow and keep at it. Proud of our city. If you have yet to swell the total and show what Sac's made of, you still have the hours to join in the magic: https://www.bigdayofgiving.org/wakingthevillage