But What Is It?!??

Our classes are about the process, not the product. One day your child will create recognizable figures, but for now, their arts & crafts are about discovery: What is this stuff, and what does it do? What happens when I add liquid to watercolor paints...when I press the crayon lightly to the paper? When I press hard? What happens when I smoosh together the yellow paint with the red, green and purple? Though sometimes their work may not look like art, it is your child’s way of figuring out the world. We aim to keep this “art of discovery” very much alive with fun, interesting and engaging projects. It may not look like anything to you, but it is representational of who your child is at the moment – the ultimate explorer.

What Do Parents Have to Say?

“I am so lucky to have discovered Creative Kids! Though my child attends multiple activities during the week (ballet, swimming, gymnastics) in addition to Creative Kids, CKNY is far and away her favorite. She can’t wait for Thursday to arrive and often has trouble napping before class because she is so excited about going to class. She is immensely proud of her work and can’t wait to display to us when she gets home. The projects are so much more than I originally anticipated. Though I expected (and would have been happy with) drawings and paintings that would be hung all over our house, what Morgan creates at CKNY is so much more. She is particularly proud of the potted painted flowers she made for me for Mother’s Day and the keepsake box she made for her dad for Father’s Day. Her favorite theme was the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and she proudly shows her three-dimensional representation of it to any visitors to our home! I personally think that the effort that Amy puts into the classes is amazing. The themes are consistently appropriate and intriguing for young minds and capture the children’s’ imagination. Morgan often talks about the subject matter of a particular CKNY class for days or weeks afterwards. The different mediums used in each class play well to the short attention span of toddlers and the fact that the materials have been prepped in advance keeps them interested through the entire class. I happily endorse Amy and CKNY as one of the best programs in which my child has ever participated. It has, in my opinion, fueled her creative play and imagination like no other program with which we’ve been involved.” Lorie Beers (mother of Morgan, age 2 ½) “My daughter talks about her art class all week, and asks every day when it’s time to see Amy again. Creative Kids has the most incredible projects I’ve seen in any toddler program. I love the way all the projects and themes are tied together. Often I’ll wonder where my daughter learned about something in particular, and then I’ll remember it was a theme we did in class weeks or months before.” - Kristina Witt (mother of Julia, age 2 ½) “In his short life, my son has attended a variety of classes. We tried music, gymnastics, and swimming before I saw the flyer for Creative Kids art classes. Hands-down, this is the winner. The themes each week are age-appropriate and appealing. The projects are able to be done independently (ask any 2-year-old how they'd like that!) and involve a wide variety of sensory experiences. When I tell my son that he has art the next morning, he gets so excited. He begins to speculate about what the theme might be -- or what the projects might be. It's evident that Amy cares about what she does and her level of preparation is evident in the materials for each class.” - Randi Pellett, M.A. Early Child Development (mother of Jake, age 2 ½) “Joshua attends a number of mommy-and-me classes, but he looks forward to his art class with Creative Kids NY the most. Amy is always incredibly prepared for each session – prep work is done in advance so the kids can jump right in, and all the art supplies are presented safely and accessibly for toddlers; amazingly, the projects are themed to match a story, stickers, and even coloring books to bring home and stretch the theme throughout the upcoming week! Every class day, we leave his projects on the dinner table until his father comes home, so Joshua can show off his work. We still have almost every one of them, and they all get used – we flew the kite at the beach, he demands his umbrella whenever it rains, and he plays with the frog, the bus, the pirate ship, and the car all the time. I’m convinced that the reason he loves them so is that he genuinely created them himself. All the activities are age-appropriate and require very little parent assistance – in Joshua’s case, this means he gets to actively participate in the project instead of sitting around, bored, impatient, and unhappy to be sidelined. Two days ago I took him to another crafting class, and I actually had to drag him out early, kicking and screaming, because there was so much downtime that he repeatedly threw temper tantrums. I cannot imagine this happening at Creative Kids because unlike almost every other teacher out there, Amy understands what a toddler needs. Joshua is able to experiment with the media used (paint, glue, stickers, glitter, etc.) and learn for himself. Because of this experiential learning approach, his skills have improved noticeably in the months that we have gone to Creative Kids NY – and he has had a blast doing it.” - Amy Klein (mother of Joshua, age 2) ”My three year-old daughter Coco and I enjoy our Creative Kids classes so much. She loves to guess what the theme of the story will be before class and she can't wait to show her father her finished projects after class. She has also "adopted" some of her favorite projects-like the snake and paper doll-as favorite playtime friends. As a mother I enjoy Amy's highly organized, well-structured, creatively themed classes. I also feel included in the class without feeling pressured to act or perform in a certain way( as I have in other children's arts classes). In fact, Amy's low-key approach allows the children to make discoveries on their own, which is the whole point of learning.” - C. Caro (mother of Coco, age 3)