Workshop 1:
Pop UP! Light, Shadow, and Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom
Online Via ZOOM
Date: September 16th 6:30–8:30 PM PST
$50.00 Register
Unlike many objects in our environment, light is constantly changing—it appears, disappears, stretches, flickers, and moves in response to even the smallest actions. This unpredictability captures our attention, as curiosity and wonder. Light also becomes the gateway for technology, as we harness it’s use to change out viewpoint, create mystery and develop new perspectives. In this Branches Atelier 100 Languages Access Program workshop, educators are invited to explore light, shadow, and their intersections with technology as dynamic languages for thinking, research, and expression in early childhood classrooms.
The workshop highlights the role of documentation and technology as tools for observation, reflection, and communication both for children and adults. Educators will see examples of how photography, video, projection, and digital media can deepen inquiry, make learning visible, and support children in revisiting and extending their theories over time.
Together, we will ask:
- How can light and technology become languages for thinking rather than simply tools for instruction?
- How can we design environments that provoke curiosity, experimentation, and collaboration?
- How can documentation practices support children in revisiting, refining, and sharing their ideas?
- In what ways can light and shadow create opportunities for interdisciplinary learning across science, art, mathematics, literacy, and design?
Join us as we reflect on creating classrooms where wonder, aesthetics, and inquiry intersect—spaces where children are seen as capable researchers and communicators who use many languages to understand and transform their world. Through collaborative reflection on environments and inquiries, participants will gain practical strategies for integrating light, shadow, and technology into everyday classroom experiences while honoring children’s agency, creativity, and unique ways of knowing.
Workshop 2:
Creating Imaginary Worlds in the Construction Space
Online Via ZOOM
Date: September 22nd 6:30–8:30 PM PST
$50.00 Register
The construction space is a rich landscape for imagination, storytelling, design, and collaborative inquiry. Drawing inspiration from children’s lived experiences, architecture, urban design, and children’s innate capacity for world-building, participants will investigate how narrative become a catalyst for increasingly complex construction and social justice questions and sustained play.
Rather than viewing block play as simply building structures, this workshop invites us to see construction as a language through which children communicate theories, negotiate complex relationships, and imagine possible futures. Through the creation of worlds, children weave together stories that inspire, habitats, transportation systems, and landscapes that evolve over days and weeks. Our imagination and negotiated narratives provide the “why” behind the creative process, encouraging children to revisit ideas, solve emerging problems, and add layers of complexity as their worlds grow.
Participants will see examples of how children have worked with a diverse collection of mixed materials—including wooden blocks, natural materials, graphic materials, recycled elements, and figures—to discover how combining materials supports iterative thinking. As children revisit their constructions, materials become invitations to reinterpret ideas, transform spaces, and extend stories in unexpected directions. Each new material offers another language through which children can refine their theories and communicate increasingly sophisticated ideas.
We will also consider how visualization is central to the design process. Sketches, maps, blueprints, photographs, models, and collaborative conversations allow children to externalize their thinking, making ideas visible to themselves and others. Documentation becomes more than a record of learning—it becomes a research tool that enables children to reflect, revisit, and reinterpret their work over time. These cycles of observation, reflection, redesign, and reconstruction mirror the practices of architects, artists, engineers, and urban planners, demonstrating that creativity flourishes through revision rather than perfection.
Together, we will explore questions such as:
- How do narratives inspire increasingly complex construction and collaborative play?
- How might mixed materials provoke new possibilities and multiple iterations of children’s ideas?
- What role can visualization play in helping children plan, communicate, and refine their designs?
- How can documentation support reflection, reinterpretation, and sustained inquiry over days, weeks, or months?
- In what ways can construction spaces become places where art, engineering, science, literacy, mathematics, ecology, and storytelling naturally intersect?
Join us as we consider how we can design classroom environments that value process over product, collaboration over competition, and curiosity over predetermined outcomes. Participants will gain practical strategies for introducing open-ended provocations, curating meaningful materials, documenting children’s evolving theories, and fostering learning environments where imagination and design continually inform one another.
Workshop 3:
THE ATELIER OF TASTE ®: Flavor as a Language of Thinking, Composition & Connection
FULL-DAY HANDS-ON, ON SITE WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS
Presented By Patricia Hunter McGrath and Christina Bianchi
On Campus @ Branches Atelier
Date: September 26th 9:00am–3:00 PM
$135.00 Register
Join us at Branches Atelier for an all-new, immersive Atelier of Taste workshop as we re-imagine and re-examine our relationships with flavor as a an opening for thinking, creating, communicating, and connecting with the living world. Inspired by the children’s recent inquiries at Branches Atelier we will explore taste not simply as an experience of eating, but as a language through which children can investigate the attributes of favor:
Flavor as a material for transformation,
- a connection to culture,
- a manifestation of place,
- a way of building relationships,
- A pathway into investigating ecological cycles.
- What if we approached flavor the way an artist approaches color?
- Where does flavor begin?
- How do children develop theories through tasting?
- How might seeds connect the garden to the kitchen?
- How can we make ecological cycles visible to children?
COME READY TO:
- Taste.
- Notice.
- Wonder.
- Compose.
- Grow.
- Share.
- Return.
- Begin again.
THE ATELIER OF TASTE ® – Taste is not simply something we experience. It is something we can use to think.
Workshop 4:
Threading Ideas: Fiber, Stitch & the Hundred Languages of Children:
An Evening HANDS-ON WORKSHOP FOR EDUCATORS
Presented Patricia Hunter McGrath and Christina Bianchi
Date: October 1st 6:00–9:00 PM
$75.00 Register
Discover the transformative power of stitch as we explore how it can can be a bridge between fabric and form. We’ll provide insights, techniques, and inspiration to elevate your creations in fiber.
In This Workshop, We Explore:
- What is the language of fibers?
- How do fibers invite children to slow down?
- How can we introduce the language of stitch without prescribing a product?What happens when fiber encounters other languages?
- How might stitching become a graphic language?
- What mathematical ideas live within patterns?
- What scientific ideas might live within tension and resistance?
- How can fibers support storytelling?
- How can natural fibers connect us to the living world?
- How do we create an environment where fiber investigations can continue over weeks or months?
No previous sewing or fiber experience is necessary.
Beginners are welcome. Experienced makers are welcome.
The workshop is designed around the idea that our own encounter with a material helps us better understand the possibilities we can offer children.
COME READY TO:
- Untangle.
- Connect.
- Thread.
- Pull.
- Loop.
- Weave.
- Stitch.
- Unravel.
- Begin again.
Reggio Inspirations 