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Our Programs
Adding and Subtracting by Magic
Students will learn to do a variety of math magic tricks. To successfully pull off the tricks, they must perform mental addition or subtraction. When they show family and friends their new tricks from each session they will also be honing their mental math...
All That Dance!
What do Jazz, Modern, West African and Hip Hop dance have in common? Your students will make the connection after spending three weeks exploring each dance style and learning about their history and music. An optional end of the semester school performance can...
All That Jazz!
With dancer/choreographer Alicia Gbaho, students explore Jazz Swing dance and the music and history associated with it. Vocabularies increase and confidence is strengthened as students learn partner dances such as the Lindy Hop, Charleston, and Jitterbug. The...
Alphabet Adventures: Phonics Fun
Pre-writing and pre-reading skills are introduced to young learners through the excitement of music, movement, story and visual art. Each session, with children’s book author and illustrator Sandra Griffin, focuses on a vowel or one of the common consonants. Hearing,...
Art of Baseball
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Carrie Launius) Explore all aspects of baseball while developing essential math skills related to analyzing data. Through small group collaborative analysis, students delve into various data points across the...
Art of Story
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM The Art of Story provides arts-integrated learning experiences to students with severe disabilities and self-contained classrooms. Each student receives five hours of instruction through a storytelling/story-writing residency. For...
Baby Artsplay!™
Springboard offers children ages birth to three years, along with their teachers, parents and caregivers, the opportunity to take part in a Baby Artsplay!™ residency program in their community. The goal of a Baby Artsplay! Classroom-Based Residency is to provide...
Best Foot Forward: An Intro to the Art of Public Speaking
This class is designed to build confidence and create ease in the art of public speaking. Through carefully guided exercises, activities, and creative imagery, students will explore the concepts of body awareness and vocalization. Lively and fun theater improvisations...
Capoeira Angola: Movement and Music
Capoeira serves as an introduction to Afro-Brazilian Cultures. Students are also introduced to cultural concepts of Brazil, Brazilian history, and the Portuguese language. Classes are taught over a period of 8 weeks. Classes are divided into four parts: 1) Stretching...
Care-full Stories
Young children learn to care for the people in their daily lives with children’s librarian Marilyn Lane. From Goldilocks who returns to apologize to the Three Bears, to the forest animals who snuggle with the bear to stay warm, students’ visualization skills are...
Carnaval! Brazilian Percussion
Moacyr Marchini, a native of Brazil, invites students to experience the heartbeat of his native country. The classroom will be filled with students playing tambourines, shakers, rain sticks, cowbells and traditional Brazilian instruments such as the pandeiros, the...
Creative Movement Exploration
Creative Movement Exploration introduces students to creative concepts of dance, body-spatial awareness and expression through performance. Students will explore movement to music, while joyfully focusing their energy and stimulating their imagination. The program...
Dance as Joy
In this program, South Indian movement artist Aparna Tara shares her multicultural dance experience to encourage students to create movement practices that work best for them. Students explore styles from around the world, ranging from Indian dance, yoga, West African...
Dance to the Drum, Drum to the Dance
Join Kunama Mtendaji on an exciting journey exploring the rhythmic textures of African percussion through music and dance. This program will focus on either the folklore of the United States, or areas in West Africa, Haiti, and Cuba, and will emphasize the languages,...
Dancing Engineers
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing Engineers is a 3-5 day virtual STEM-focused creative dance residency that explores the 6-step engineering process through movement. Drawing additional inspiration from forms such as bridges, arches, and...
Dancing Histories
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing Histories is a 3-5 day virtual creative dance residency that studies a pivotal historical event through movement and collaborative dance making. Classroom teachers and the Teaching Artist will work together...
Dancing Lifecycles
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing Lifecycles is a 3-5 day virtual STEM-focused creative dance residency that explores the lifecycles of plant life, animal life, or weather through movement and dance making. Directed by dance educator and...
Dancing the Painting
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing the Painting is a 3-5 day virtual creative dance residency that explores and responds to a work of visual art through dance making. This residency is directed by dance educator and choreographer Sarah...
Dancing the Poem
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing the Poem is a 3-5 day virtual creative dance and poetry writing residency that will engage students in an exploration of the poetic form through movement. Directed by dance educator and choreographer Sarah...
Dancing the Story
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Dancing the Story is a 3-5 day virtual creative dance residency that explores a work of literature through movement and dance making. Directed by dance educator and choreographer Sarah Council, students will consider...
Dramatic Play Through Puppetry
Guided by puppeteer Paul Vandivort, students in this program learn to use puppets to enter imaginary worlds and to act out stories. In small groups, students practice cooperation while playing games that teach math, phonics and public speaking skills. Creating their...
Ethnic Percussion
This cross-disciplinary program builds students’ self-esteem, increases their concentration and problem-solving abilities, and fosters their belief in both the importance of their work as an individual and their role in the community. In this way, it correlates very...
Geometricks: Learning Geometry with Magic
Students will deepen their knowledge of geometry in a fun way as magic meets math. Perform magic with 5 different types of triangles! Demonstrate amazing properties of circles when they are stretched to their limits! Speed calculate the area of a rectangle! Each...
HealthWise
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM Knowing how to take care of yourself is the single most important thing one learns in school. But do students know how? HealthWise demonstrates ways to take care of “you.” The goal of HealthWise is to help students understand how to...
Hear It! Tell It! Learn It!
Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the cornerstones of literacy and all four are combined in this action-packed residency. Students will hear stories and then become storytellers themselves…repeating the stories in large groups, small groups and...
Heart of the Story
Students learn the many ways a story can be told in this innovative program taught by storyteller and puppeteer Daniel Romano. Each week they will be engaged in a folktale through storytelling, read-alouds, role plays, and/or puppet shows, comparing and contrasting...
Hip Hop Dance
Students explore Hip hop dance and the music and history associated with it. New vocabularies are acquired and put to use as students learn basic break dance steps and recognize routines from everyday life that inspire dances. The program culminates with...
I am a Storyteller
Bring out the natural storyteller in your students in this performance/literacy program! Students are immersed in folktales, written and oral, from Anansi trickster tales to tall tales of John Henry and Paul Bunyan. They then select, adapt, and learn a story to...
IdeaBuilder
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Celeste Nichols and Carrie Launius) In this hands-on residency students create a prototype of a product that solves a real world problem in their daily lives. Students must use critical thinking to determine a...
Improv Theater!
Improv Theater! is a unique theater class that combines theater games, acting techniques, and improvisation in a mix of adventure and creative exploration. Students create impromptu scenes and characters in a fun and supportive environment. Additionally, this class...
Intro to V/O for Kids
In this residency, students will discover the value of their unique voice and how to unlock other voices hidden inside of them. They will be taught basic acting and voiceover techniques and skills that will help them become talented voice actors. They will also...
Latin Dance Excursion
Explore the music and history associated with Latin Dance. Students learn Salsa, Bachata and other dance moves with teaching artist Carmen Guynn, and are introduced to different styles of music and musical instrumentation, opening their minds to a plethora of...
Learning Through Movement
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Andrea Peoples) Explore the music and history associated with dance in America. Students learn hip-hop, disco and other dance moves that developed in America. Students are introduced to different styles of music...
Lifestyle Changes!
Under the direction of dance education professional Alicia Gbaho, students will learn that dance is an art that is vital to the development of the total individual. It contributes to physical fitness, enhancing abilities such as agility, strength, endurance, and...
Lightning Multiplication and Division Tricks
Students will learn secrets of lightning calculation, focusing on multiplication and division. They will learn to mentally multiply a variety of 2 digit x 2 digit problems; to divide numbers circled on a calendar using mental division; to add 10 audience-generated...
Mammal Music
Marko and his magical guitar enliven audiences with interactive songs that will move your body and your mind. His live musical show features songs from his new solo album "Mammal Music," which was made with Grammy Award Winning Children's Music producer Dean Jones....
Messages in the Media
Ed Reggi leads a variety of theater games, hands-on projects and video presentations where students analyze the effects of media messages on their community’s attitudes and sharpen their own media literacy skills. Each student creates a mini-commercial in the form of...
Mindful Movement
Mindful Movement introduces students to awareness of self, space and community using creative movement and dance. The program will lead students through a series of activities that will reduce stress and anxiety, enhance focus, and explore empathy and emotions in a...
Mission Improvable
Discover the creative world of improvisational dramatics. While constructing a short play based on a classroom theme, children experience the improvisation arts of pantomime, storytelling and spontaneous character. Ed Reggi chooses from more than 50 improvisation...
Move, Create and Collaborate
Note: This program can only be delivered virtually. Move, Create and Collaborate is a 3-5 day arts-integrated, virtual creative dance residency that engages students in an exploration of classroom curriculum through movement and dance-making. Working together over...
Moving Through Math
This interactive lecture-demonstration is a fun and lively program using music and dance to bring elementary math and geometry to life. The performance catalyzes children’s capacity to grasp mathematical concepts by simultaneously stimulating visual, auditory and...
Moving Through Multiplication
Designed to help students conceptually grasp the foundation of multiplication, this program is designed to support student learning of factors and multiples, and later on, fractions. It explores how patterns lay the fundamental building blocks of music, dance, and...
Moving Through Science
Students learn from Sir Isaac Newton and his team of dancers how scientific principles affect human movement in this performance. As students witness The Law of Motion Dancers perform a series of leaps, turns, and lifts, they discover how scientific knowledge can be...
Moving With Character: Building a Classroom Community
Moving with Character engages students in Creative Dance and Movement activities that address social emotional learning. Using the concepts of body, space, and energy, students will explore ways they inhabit their bodies, and navigate and express feelings. The...
MusicMaker
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Mark Pagano) Students develop a variety of literacy skills through music creation and songwriting in this hands-on residency. Students learn the basic components of music while constructing themed lyrics to...
On Your Toes: Exploring Story Through Ballet
This program introduces students to the art of classical ballet. In the first half of the residency, they focus on the discipline and technique of ballet, learning proper posture and numerous ballet steps, the French words for the steps and their meaning in English....
Picture Bookmaking
This program introduces children to the joy of writing, illustrating and reading aloud their own original stories. A published author/illustrator of children's books, Sandra Griffin shares with students the process and rewards of creating illustrated books. Students...
Re-Tell Me a Story
In each thirty minute residency session, children will hear and actively participate in a variety of curriculum-themed stories that strengthen their listening skills and stretch their attention spans – AND within each session, children will dramatize and re-tell...
Read! Write! Act!
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Alissa Rowan) Lights, camera, action! Students become master playwrights/screenwriters and enhance essential literacy skills as they work through the writing process of developing a scene in a play or a movie....
Rhythms and Folklore of Africa
Kenya's signature program highlights cultural diversity through stories and illustrates African culture in an entertaining way. It is ideal for schools, festivals, theater and community events. And it can be adapted to either indoor or outdoor venues. Audience...
Self Study Movement
Mindful practices like yoga and meditation give children the opportunity to gain social-emotional learning skills. This is important because it helps students cope with everyday challenges, and benefits them academically by increasing their mental focus and clarity,...
Sogo Bo
Diadié Bathily and his troupe use dance, drumming and song to tell a timeless West African traditional cautionary tale. The riveting story of a child who doesn’t listen to his elders is played out by dancers wearing ceremonial masks and larger-than-life costumes. The...
Sogo Bo: Creating and Animating West African Puppets
Guide students through the entire creative process of bringing a story to life. In this multidisciplinary 4-session residency, children learn a traditional morality tale from Mali, West Africa; they meet the characters and each child assumes a role. Each student...
Songs Can Change the World
During this sing-along for little folks, young children build community and experience joy as they keep the tradition of American folk music alive. This residency includes singing and movement and emphasizes themes of family and friendship, diversity, the environment,...
Stories with Drums
Kunama drums, sings, dances and tells stories with a vibrant energy, bringing together students of all ages. The tales, rich in African-American folklore, come to life through audience participation in music and dance from the United States, Africa, Brazil and the...
Team Building Through World Percussion
This residency is a hands-on percussion experience. Students use authentic percussion instruments to learn to build community and teams during a rhythmic journey around the world. The rhythms of Brazil, Africa, the Caribbean, Cuba, and Japan are designed to explore...
Three Little What-zits and the Big Bad Who-zit
In this residency, Sherry Norfolk will perform a fractured version of “The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf,” then explore the pattern of fracturing stories with students. Students will research a particular state, continent, habitat or region to choose their...
Turn Off The Lights
With shadow puppets, a completely different type of performance is available. Shadow Puppets resemble silhouettes more than traditional puppets and can move in very life-like and dramatic ways. When the house lights go down and the stage light casts the first shadow,...
Visualizing Mathematics
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM (Originally Developed by Ellie Balk) Do some of your students struggle to connect with mathematics? Teaching core math curriculum through the lens of visual art can give the students confidence to learn and absorb more content in...
Voice and Verse
Through spoken word poetry, students will engage in self-exploration, vocabulary expansion, and public speaking. Published poet and spoken word artist Pacia Anderson will work with students on the major elements of spoken word poetry, such as: content, structure, word...
We Are the World
Students travel each week to a different country with storyteller Linda Kram. Students learn the differences and similarities between cultures as they greet each other and learn to count in another country’s language, explore its artifacts, and participate in music...
West African Dance
Students explore dances from West Africa dance and the music, culture, and history associated with it. They acquire new vocabularies which they put to use as they perform and choreograph dances such as the Diansa and Mendianie. The program may culminate in...
West African Dance
This African dance program, taught by professional dancer and instructor Diadié Bathily, introduces students to the basic movement of West African dance. Through African dance, elementary, middle and high school students increase physical fitness, improve coordination...
West African Drum Orchestra and Culture
Students in this program learn how to play West African drums and other percussion instruments. As they sit in a drum circle each week, where the focus is on their fellow students’ work, they learn to listen. Lessons about rhythm and improvisation are interspersed...
What I Said! – Writing the Story and Telling It
In this original monologue writing class for kids, student authors/performers engage in verbal and physical activities designed to liberate and excavate the imagination. Led by award-winning actor and playwright Branislav Tomich, this residency provides...
WiseWrite
A SPRINGBOARD SIGNATURE PROGRAM From the first brainstorming session to an original performance by professional actors, students in the WiseWrite program learn what it takes to be a playwright — all while strengthening their literacy and writing skills. WiseWrite...
Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts
Springboard to Learning is the only Missouri affiliate of the National Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts. The Wolf Trap professional development model helps to prepare young children for a lifetime of learning by educating, modeling, and coaching...
Wright Rhythms for Small Hands
While scraping, shaking and striking a wide variety of instruments, the enthusiasm of Glen “Papa” Wright energizes the classroom as he leads students through a creative musical adventure. Instruments are amusingly introduced to demonstrate basic rhythms, sound effects...
Writing, Drama and Puppetry
Students explore and become excited about reading and writing through puppetry. As a group, students explore the writing process and become familiar with story elements and dramatic forms of writing. Then through creation their own puppets, students write their own...
Young Voices
Students experiment with visualization, drama skills and storytelling techniques to act and “tell” their way through the process of writing a story. The classroom teacher selects a theme; Sherry then tells a story based on that theme and dissects its structure for...