We created this course for educators, studio owners, and anyone who works with young children. The course is designed to equip adult facilitators with tools and practices necessary to feel comfortable and confident with open-ended materials. Pairing practical guidance with simple ideas, inspiring photos, and real stories and images from classrooms contextualizes this creative approach to learning. We have found that this kind of training is often missing from education programs and professional development experiences. When we feel confident and creative, children feel safe to take risks, innovate, explore, and express.

Our art & play curriculum guides center around a big idea or theme and include a variety of invitations, picture books, and activities related to that big idea or theme. Materials Matter offers playbooks, videos, and other resources that are focused on the mechanics of how to source, store, and offer 12 foundational art and play materials. We dive deep into the brands we use, the variety of choices, how to pare down, what to look for in your community, collecting, organizing, storing, and how to offer the materials in accessible and aesthetically inspiring ways. Our mantra for open-ended creativity is to set it up and see what happens. Throughtout this course, you will learn how to see all areas of the room as opportunities for creative learning. In addition to our 12 Playbooks and 12 video workshops in Materials Matter, those enrolled in the course also have an opportunity to reflect and earn 12 professional learning certificates.

We understand that each educator has different requirements depending on the setting. We have designed Materials Matter to be accessible to all who work with young children, regardless of circumstance, and to easily integrate into established curriculums. Whether you have full support to make time and space for play and process art or need a confidence boost so that you will be able to advocate for it, throughout the course we will show you ways to integrate these open-ended experiences into the day. Small tweaks and changes to the way we offer art and play experiences add up to true transformation in the classroom, studio, or wherever you are with young children.

Absolutely! In fact, we base our entire philosophy around setting up art and play experiences that can easily span multi-ages and different abilities. We do this by teaching you how to create open-ended stations where children have agency and choice and where materials can be used in flexible ways to meet children where they are.

After you purchase this course you will create a login in to your Materials Matter portal which takes you to a menu with a page for each of the 12 materials. Every page has a downloadable, 25-page playbook, a list of material and book links, an in-depth video, reflection questions, and a PD certificate. You will have lifetime access to all content.

Yes, you can purchase this course at any time of the year. Content is self-paced. Although we did design the flow of this course in order of basic to more complex, you can pick and choose where you want to begin and spread it out over any time period that works for you.

Absolutely! We have designed most of our creative experiences within each Playbook to incorporate recycled and repurposed materials that you can source in your own community or substitute with what's available to you. Another benefit is that this course is not seasonal and works just as well for the Southern and Northern Hemispheres.

We ask that you purchase one membership per classroom, please. If you are co-teachers, then you can share one membership. We’ve made our curriculum incredibly inexpensive and offer discounts for schools. We appreciate your support in our work!

Yes, we have bulk discounts for schools and will work with Title 1 schools to ensure our programs and resources are affordable and accessible to all. Please email us for more info!

We will be offering coaching services in Fall 2024, so please join our mailing list to stay in the loop!

Our Instagram is very in-depth. We have story highlights of each module of Materials Matter, with sneak peeks inside the playbooks, video footage of materials being used in the classroom, and lots of relevant shared content. You can get a more detailed inside look at how the course portal works in this Instagram reel.

Of course! You can email us anytime. You can also message us through Instagram. We will get back to you as soon as we can within 24 hours.