The world is changing quickly and by the time our children become adults, life will be drastically different. To become productive and positive contributors to society our children will need different types of skills and knowledge in addition to what traditional schooling offers them today. Going forward creative-thinking, empathy, human-centered design thinking, and the ability to communicate will be ever more important.
Tinkerseeds is a learning community organized by passionate educators intent on exploring children's ingenuity in creative self-expression and social learning environments. We truly believe education should be meaningful, engaging, and centered around the human condition. Arts education is infused with purposeful uses of technology and project-based learning all wrapped around a core belief that stories and storytelling are powerful devices to drive meaningful learning.
From these principles, we have developed a holistic educational approach that teaches the whole child while also happening to be a natural and effective way to teach language!
We start with picture books to harness the curiosity and natural love of storytelling that children have. This starts conversations as they play with ideas and thoughts shared among the group. This in turn sparks new ideas as the children work with a large variety of art materials, found items, and educational tools during an open-ended and flexible workshop environment. Child-led projects emerge which are supported by our teachers as they find new picture books to further explore and introduce ideas. As the children are working with materials they develop ideas for stories which are recorded by teachers and discussed among the other students. Teachers will support students in transforming their ideas in various ways, from blocks to art murals, or from paper to story acting, for example. This process feeds the natural drive to learn new things and to share it with others through multiple ways, including through the English language. Because we are engaged in the children's own stories, the English they are learning is profoundly more meaningful and effective. We're not just teaching English to children, but teaching through English in ways that develop a sense of agency in their learning, creative thinking, and self-expression as part of a community of learners.
