Wolf Trap Welcomes the National Science Foundation and Partners for the 2022 “Brain Dance Workshop” How does creative movement influence the brain’s ability to adapt? This April, a team of scientists, engineers, artists, educators, and choreographers from around the world gathered at Wolf Trap to explore the connection between dance and neuroplasticity for the 2022 International Workshop on the Neural and Social Bases of Creative...
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Recently, Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts added five new professional artists from the DC-metro area to its roster of 255 teaching artists. From a bilingual clarinetist to a children’s book author, these new teaching artists come from a wide array of backgrounds, experiences, and disciplines, but what unites them is their love of the arts, and their desire to share that...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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