As a young parent, there is often no moment more gratifying than seeing your baby light up. Whether through a smile, a giggle, or a wiggle, your child is demonstrating through a non-verbal movement or expression that he or she has made a connection. Research shows that in the first years of life, the brain forms one million new neural connections every second. Those connections...
Read More
Wolf Trap’s Valerie Carroll Helps Establish Bedtime Routines for Prince George’s County Families with Baby ArtsPlay!™ It’s the end of the day, and you’re exhausted from a hard day’s work. You’ve just finished cleaning up the dishes, and now it’s time to get your children ready for bed so you can have a few minutes for yourself. Down the hall your children go to gather...
Read More
Wolf Trap Master Teaching Artist Wincey Terry-Bryant traces her love of music back to a small Pentecostal church in Jersey City, N.J., where she first learned to sing. “We didn’t have musicians,” she says, “so our choir sang a capella.” Their choir director, Carolyn Dale, had perfect pitch and drilled them regularly on harmony. One Sunday morning, Terry-Bryant was asked to fill in for one...
Read More
What are the qualities of an effective teaching artist? Is it a love of the arts, or an interest in working with children? Is it a formal degree or years of experience as a professional artist? This is something the Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts team contemplates on a regular basis. Their job is to develop teaching artists into dynamic communicators...
Read More
What does it mean to “meet students where they are”? In 2017, the Aurora Institute released a series of briefs1 that championed this concept, in which it called upon educators to look at students from a more holistic perspective: students could not truly thrive if they were academically competent, but were struggling in other areas, Aurora Institute advised. Teachers needed to gauge where their students...
Read More
It’s hard to be around Latin Grammy-winning duo Andrés and Christina and not smile. The positive energy they exude on stage, as 123 (Uno, Dos, Tres) Andrés, is infectious─and is a testament to their popularity in the children’s music industry. What their fans might not know is that Andrés and Christina are also Teaching Artists for Wolf Trap’s Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts....
Read More
Children’s music artist Pierce Freelon is not slowing down. Fresh from the release of his second album, Black to the Future, Freelon also recently penned his first children’s picture book Daddy Daughter Day, set to be published in 2022. He is a City Council Member in his hometown of Durham, N.C. and has traveled the world teaching Hip Hop and music production to youth as...
Read More
First-generation Korean-American children’s performer Elena Moon Park, who will be performing as part of the 2021 summer season of Children Performances at Wolf Trap, believes that “everyone is a soundmaker,” to borrow a term from musician Mark Stewart. Born in East Tennessee to parents who immigrated to the United States from Korea, Park was surrounded by music early on. After taking a break to study...
Read More
For all of its challenges, 2020 turned out to be a pretty good year professionally for singer/songwriter Joanie Leeds. Not only did she release a GRAMMY-winning album, All the Ladies, but she also found a way to make new music over Zoom in the middle of the pandemic, with a young child at home. Leeds’ creativity and ingenuity has followed her throughout her life and...
Read More
From a young age, award-winning jazz musician Oran Etkin formed a deep love for music of all disciplines. As a professional musician, he has traveled the world, learning the music “language” of different cultures, and is dedicated to passing those rich musical traditions on to the next generation. This season, Oran Etkin will perform on the Filene Center stage as part of its 2021 Children’s...
Read More
