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Showing posts with label field trips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label field trips. Show all posts

Friday, May 6, 2016

Arts Education and School Time Field Trips for 2016-2017



Super Scientific Circus, October 11th
Reserve space for your group now.

The Thrasher-Horne Center’s popular School Time Series offers entertaining, educational and engaging performances for students. Through these educational programs, the Thrasher-Horne Center continues its commitment to enrich the lives of the students it serves. There are five exciting performances scheduled for the coming school year.

Super Scientific Circus, October 11th

Parsons Dance, October 14th

Choosy Suzy’s Bully Prevention Show, November 2nd

Seussical The Musical, February 1st

Steve Trash: Ecology Is Awesome, April 28th

For detailed information about each of the performances, check out the flyer.

Parsons Dance, October 14th
With the current school year winding down, many teachers are already planning field trips for the 2016-2017 school year. Group reservations for performances in the School Time Series can be made now. To qualify as a school group, reservations must be for 12 or more tickets. For every 12 paid tickets, the group will receive 1 ticket free. Payments will be due a month before the performances.
Clay County schools designated as Title One may inquire about the Thrasher-Horne Center Title One ticket subsidy, which is made available through the Roger and Gail Arrowsmith Fund and Thrasher-Horne Center season members. To learn more about this special fund Click Here.
Teachers who are planning their field trips for 2016-2017 can make sure their students will be able to take advantage of these excellent educational opportunities by calling the Thrasher-Horne Center Box Office at 904-276-6815.


Arts Education provides positive benefits to a community

"I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his/her vision wherever it takes him/her." John F. Kennedy

"Every child is an artist.” Pablo Picasso

Young children learn a lot by doing Art

"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I do and I understand." Confucius

Choosy Suzy’s Bully Prevention Show
November 2nd
School curricula in many parts of the United States have shifted toward an emphasis on reading and math and away from the arts. Some people now regard art education as a luxury. They ignore the fact that creative activities are the building blocks of child development. Education in the arts helps young children in each of the following areas.

Motor Skills: The National Institutes of Health has found that the motions involved in making art (holding a paintbrush, scribbling with a crayon, etc.) help young children to develop their fine motor skills.

Decision Making: Art education strengthens critical-thinking skills. The experience of making decisions and choices while creating art can carry over into other parts of a child’s life.

Visual Learning: Drawing, sculpting, and threading beads on a string help to develop visual-spatial skills. Those skills are becoming increasingly important.

Inventiveness: When kids create art, they develop a sense of innovation that will serve them well in their adult lives.

Arts Education

February 1st, 2017
“From dance and music to theatre and the visual arts, the arts give children a unique means of expression, capturing their passions and emotions, and allowing them to explore new ideas, subject matter, and cultures… Arts education not only enhances students' understanding of the world around them, but it also broadens their perspective on traditional academics.”
Dr. Terry Bergeson, former Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington State

“I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for in the patterns of music and all the arts are the keys of learning." Plato

According to Americans for the Arts, Art Education provides the following benefits.

  • Students who participate in the arts, both in school and after school, demonstrate improved academic performance and lower dropout rates. Despite including the arts as being one of the ten core academic subjects, the No Child Left Behind law has helped to push arts classes to the side. Schools, especially those struggling, can retain their best teachers by becoming incubators for creativity and innovation; places where students want to learn and teachers want to teach.
  • Students with an education rich in the arts have better grade point averages, score better on standardized tests in reading and math, and have lower dropout rates—findings that cut across all socioeconomic categories. The arts can "level the playing field" for youngsters from disadvantaged circumstances. 
  • Data from The College Board shows that students who take four years of arts and music classes while in high school score 98 points better on their SATs than students who took only one-half year or less.

What can students learn from the arts?

"Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life." Henry Miller

Ecology is Awesome
April 28th, 2017
Lisa Phillips, an arts and leadership educator and the author of The Artistic Edge, wrote a blog post about Ten Skills Students Can Learn from the Arts. Here’s a summary.

1. Creativity – Being able to think on your feet, approach tasks from different perspectives and think ‘outside of the box’ can help children to find fulfillment.

2. Confidence –Theater training enables children to step out of their comfort zone, make mistakes, and learn from them. That process gives children the confidence to perform in front of audiences.

3. Problem Solving –Students who participate in the arts are challenged to solve problems. This develops children’s reasoning skills.

4. Perseverance – In a competitive world where people are being asked to continually develop new skills, perseverance is essential to achieving success. Learning about the arts teaches students this important principle.

5. Focus – Research has shown that participation in the arts improves children’s abilities to concentrate and focus on other parts of their lives.

6. Nonverbal Communication – Theater and dance education teaches children the mechanics of body language. They learn how movements communicate a variety of emotions.

7. Receiving Constructive Feedback – Constructive feedback about a performance or visual art piece is part of any instruction in the arts. Children learn that feedback is part of learning.

8. Collaboration – Many arts disciplines, like theater or band, are collaborative. Through the arts, children learn to interact with others and share responsibility as they work together to accomplish a common goal.

9. Dedication – When kids complete artistic endeavors, they associate dedication with their feeling of accomplishment. They develop habits like being on time for rehearsals and performances, respecting the contributions of others, and more.

10. Accountability – When children collaborate on an artistic project, they begin to understand how their actions can affect others.

Arts in a Community

The arts provide us with a universal language, and they have the capacity to breathe life into a community. The arts can bring a community together in a way that commerce, politics, and religion cannot.

Seeing the performing arts, either in a play or in a musical or dance performance, can make an enormous difference in the life of a child or young adult. Some are inspired to pursue careers in the arts themselves. Others take an active interest in the arts which nurtures them throughout their lives.

"Art is the signature of civilization." Beverly Sills

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In this article, I’ve written about the Thrasher-Horne Center’s School Time Series of performances for the 2016-2017 school year. I’ve also written about the impact of Arts Education to a community. From teaching motor skills to young children to teaching young adults about responsibility and perseverance, Arts Education plays an important role.

Tickets for concerts and other events and others are on sale now on the Thrasher-Horne Center’s website.

The Thrasher-Horne Center is one of the nicest venues of its type in Northeast Florida. From concerts by renowned artists, to live theater, to dance, to magic and other fantastic shows, you can see it all at the Thrasher Horne-Center! 

Spread the word about one of Northeast Florida’s best kept secrets! Tell your family and friends about the Thrasher-Horne Center. People will appreciate learning about what they have been missing.

We appreciate you taking the time to visit us. If you have a comment about this article, please leave it in the comments section below.

Monday, August 17, 2015

Back to School at the Thrasher-Horne Center




Miss Nelson is Missing
November 10, 2015

Upcoming School Time Shows


The 2015-2016 school year is officially underway and the Thrasher-Horne Center has several excellent educational events coming up which will be fun and engaging for students. Since the Thrasher-Horne Center opened in 2004, over 50,000 students have attended school time performances. With a beautiful state-of-the-art facility and a courteous and helpful staff, the Thrasher-Horne Center is the perfect destination for educational field trips.

School time performances are open to all schools and home school groups.  Tickets for groups of less than twelve and for people who are not attending with a school are also available. Most of the Thrasher-Horne Center’s school time performances feature study guides for teachers to use in the classroom before and after the performances. They are available on the Thrasher-Horne Center website. 

The National Education Association recently published a newsletter article on How Field Trips Boost Students’ Lifelong Success. In the article, Carylann Assante, executive director for Student & Youth Travel Association, said, “Today's students are visual learners and a field trip lets them see and listen to what they’re learning about, build on classroom instruction, gain a better understanding of topics, build cultural understanding and tolerance, and exposes them to worlds outside their own.”

Ms. Assante had the following suggestions for planning a successful field trip.

  • Look around your region for nearby trips. There are lots of inexpensive things teachers can do that will have a phenomenal impact.
  • Follow protocol. Teachers need to review their school's policies on field trips in advance and prepare the forms with specific learning objectives and how the field trip will accomplish those objectives.
  • Involve the students. Discuss the goals of the field trip in advance, talk about what they will see and what they should learn.
  • Make trips relevant. Base your field trips on your content area. Focus on how the trip fits into your content or another educational goal.
  • Follow up. Students are much more likely to write about an experience they recently had, like a field trip. Have them write about their favorite artifact or activity on the field.

Here are some of the exciting educational events coming up at the Thrasher-Horne Center through February, 2016. 

Click Clack Moo


Wednesday, September 30 at 10:15 AM
Grades K-4
Curriculum Standards: Communication and Language Arts, Literature-Based, Music, Social Studies

Based on the Caldecott Honor Book by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, Click Clack Moo is a delightful musical about negotiation and compromise, important skills that students will be able to use as they grow up.

"Udderly fabulous! Given Theatreworks USA's track record of turning classic kids' lit into magical musicals, CLICK, CLACK, MOO just reaffirms their reputation." Raven Snook, Time Out New York Kids
 

The Dinosaur Diary of Dr. T-Rex


Tuesday, October 6 at 10:15 AM
Grades K-8
Curriculum Standards: Fossils, Extinctions, Paleontology, Plate Tectonics, Geological Time Periods, Adaptation, Predator, Carnivore, Herbivore

The Dinosaur Diary of Dr. T-Rex is an interactive presentation which will help students discover the amazing world of dinosaurs while they develop their reading and writing skills. Students will be using their senses as they watch, hear, and touch realistic dinosaur puppets and museum quality fossils.

The BFG (Big Friendly Giant)


Friday, October 23 at 10:15 AM
Grades 1-6
Curriculum Standards: Literature

In the Big Friendly Giant (BFG), students will learn that heroes can come in all sizes. With a young orphan called “human bean”, the BFG embarks on an epic - and humorous -  quest to save England. The late Roald Dahl was the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and BFG was one of his personal favorite stories. 

Miss Nelson Is Missing


Tuesday, November 10 at 10:15 AM
Grades K-5
Curriculum Standards: Communication and Language Arts, Literature, Music

Although Miss Nelson was as sweet as could be, the students in her class were unruly. One  day a strict substitute named Miss Viola Swamp showed up. The students began to appreciate just how nice Miss Nelson was.  This fun  musical from Two Beans Productions will teach students about the importance of being kind.

A Light in the Dark: The Story of Helen Keller
Thodos Dance Company

 
Wednesday, January 27 at 10:15 AM
Grades 1-6
Thodos Dance Chicago presents its critically-acclaimed story ballet, A Light in the Dark: the story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan,  as part of its 2016 touring program. Although Helen Keller was deaf and blind, she became a world famous writer and political activist. The story of how Anne Sullivan guided Helen  Keller on the path to educational and intellectual fulfillment is one of the most inspiring stories about the power of education in the history of the United States. Thodos Dance Company is presenting this performance at Thrasher-Horne Center as part of the Dance Touring Initiative program.  This grant program is provided in part by South Arts, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

For 23 years, Thodos Dance Chicago has performed with captivating style described as “breathtakingly athletic” and “powerfully beautiful.” The company’s dedication to the American voice in contemporary dance has established TDC as an innovative presence in the modern dance landscape. Reaching young minds through dance education is vital to the mission of Thodos Dance Chicago. As an established teaching company, all members of the ensemble hold B.A. and M.F.A. degrees in dance and teach at the elementary, high school, and university levels.

 “A Light in the Dark is a wonderful and original show involving Anne teaching Helen how to communicate and showing her that there was a whole world to learn about and experience that she did not know.” Jennifer Lunz, L.A. Splash.

Let’s Go Science


Friday, February 26 at 10:15 AM
Grades K-7
Curriculum Standards: Science Concepts

Professor Smart and Dr. Knowitall join forces for an educational, entertaining, exciting and experiential extravaganza. Professor Smart demonstrates the principals of physics while  his comedic sidekick Dr. Knowitall keeps the facts straight. Your students will learn science concepts through impressive and memorable demonstrations!                     

School group reservations are now available! If you’re a teacher, start planning  a class field trip to the Thrasher-Horne Center today.  Tickets for groups of 12 or more are $10.00 each.  For every twelve paid admissions, one complimentary ticket will be provided. Tickets are also available to groups of less than twelve and to the general public. Payment due no later than one month before each performance. Call the Thrasher-Horne Box Office at (904) 276-6815 to reserve your seats today!

Spread the word about one of Northeast Florida’s best kept secrets! Tell your family and friends about the Thrasher-Horne Center. Share this article with them. They will appreciate learning about what they have been missing. We appreciate you taking the time to visit us. If you have a comment about this article, leave it in the comment section below. 

In this article, I’ve outlined the educational benefits of field trips for students and provided tips on how to go about planning a successful field trip. I’ve also provided summaries of upcoming opportunities for field trips to the Thrasher-Horne Center. These presentations will be engaging for students and they will fulfill a variety of curriculum requirements.