Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts is the flagship education program of Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts. A nationally recognized leader in early childhood arts-based learning, Wolf Trap Institute trains early childhood educators to use the performing arts as a teaching strategy to engage children in active learning across curricula. Arts for Learning Indiana is proud to be Central Indiana Wolf Trap affiliate.
Wolf Trap Institute’s approach is widely recognized as an effective model for direct instruction of young children and embedded professional development for teaching artists and classroom teachers. The Wolf Trap Institute’s arts-based teaching method taps into children’s innate desire for active, multisensory learning and engages their imagination through puppetry, story dramatization, and role play.
During a Wolf Trap residency, the teaching artist works in partnership with the classroom teacher, planning and delivering arts-integrated lessons in the classroom. The classroom teacher learns how performing arts strategies and techniques foster young students’ growth in all development domains. After the completion of the residency, the teacher will have acquired the skills necessary to embed arts strategies within their daily practices and apply them in current and future classes to further the success of their young students.
Wolf Trap residencies are 11-session workshops with teacher professional development. Six Arts for Learning Indiana teaching artists offer Wolf Trap workshops for pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms:
For more information about bringing a Wolf Trap residency to your school, contact Ploi Pagdalian at [email protected].