Tinkergarten offers year-long programming delivered in 4, 12-week series, which includes 9 live weekly sessions and 3 weeks of on-demand/DIY content and events each season.
Each season, we create a unique progression of lessons that support specific outcomes for children.
Our classes are offered in mixed-age groupings (18 months-8 years), which both meet the needs expressed by families, and, from our perspective, deliver a richer educational experience.
Tinkergarten activities are open-ended, child-led, and designed within a universal framework to offer both access and potential benefit to children across a range of ages and developmental needs.
We have used research to identify a subset of 8 core skills to target in our program design. We organize these skills in three buckets: ready to learn; ready to thrive; and ready for anything. The infographic below displays those 8 core skills and how our program moves through them, one season at a time.
Each season, we identify one of our 8 skills as the “focus skill.” Even though our lessons collectively support the range of skills, each lesson targets that focus skill. For example, during Spring 2023, we will focus on Empathy skills.
Each week, live classes will introduce play lessons that support a different aspect of the season skill. And families get access to related at-home curriculum to support their child in developing that skill at home through playful, outdoor learning. At the end of the series, each child earns a certificate and a one-of-a-kind iron or sew-on badge to commemorate their progress in that skill.
We map out a series of lessons for each series that can support all target outcomes and that, in particular, support our focus skill. Our new lessons are written, pre-tested, and then rolled out to teachers so that both teacher and parent enjoy novelty, and parents are intrigued by what each next season has in store.
See the sample lesson map for our Spring, 2023 Empathy program below:
To get a feel for how we think about learning, you can sample some of the hundreds of free DIY Activities shared on our website. Or, join one of our complimentary classes to get a taste of learning the Tinkergarten way.
We continually research, evaluate and iterate on our program, developing new lesson plans and curriculum for each season to keep the experience fresh and engaging for our explorers who continue to learn with us season after season, year after year!
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