On June 20th, we excitedly launched the Family Resource Center, a partnership between Kaleidoscope Learning and Monarch Montessori School. The purpose of this innovative, early childhood education focused space is to provide families with support and content within a collaborative community. Caring for young learners is no easy task, and our team witnessed the lack of networks, support, and community for families during the Coronavirus Pandemic. We are striving to be a one-stop-shop for families; a local, neighborhood space ready to ease concerns and uplift parents and caretakers. We offer a "kaleidoscope" of services on a membership basis, allowing families to pick and choose services that fit their specific needs.
Our team is incredibly excited to start offering our Educational Materials Library, our core product offering, to our member families! Our library goes beyond the typical toy library: it is filled with Montessori inspired, early childhood developmentally focused materials that enhance play time. We are big believers that children learn best through play, and we endeavor to curate our library to be filled with enriching materials that spark curiosity and creativity. Our library is also filled with high-quality children's furniture and gross motor items that are usually not found at toys libraries. Keep a look out next week for our blog that discusses all the benefits of participating in a toy library.
Now that summer is officially underway, our team wanted to highlight their current favorites of the Educational Materials Library:
Jennie - Sarah's Silks Grab Bag
Jennie has had very little exposure to play silks, but as soon as she saw them in the Educational Materials Library inventory, she knew that they would make a great summertime play accessory. Made from high quality mulberry silk, Sarah's Silks are known for allowing children to be creative with their play. A fort? A cape? A river? The possibilities are endless with play silks. Jennie especially loves how these silks can be a fine motor or gross motor item, and they compact down to take while traveling. Play silks are the ultimate open-ended play item!
Our play silks in the Educational Materials Library are earth-tone (olive green, terracotta red, ivory, cream, and cool brown) and come in a set of five. You can check out them out here.
Julia - Hand Painted Solar System
A favorite among children in the Monarch Montessori School classroom, this hand painted wooden material allows children to explore their solar system. Julia particularly loves this item because it is made from high-quality wood materials and accurately depicts the sun and planets. This beautiful, handcrafted Solar System Kit is a great way to promote discovery, fine-motor skills, and foster a wonderment of outer space. We especially love how nice the pieces feel and little details on the board. This is the perfect educational toy for any young learner interested in discovering planets, outer space, the solar system, or the galaxy!
We currently have two Hand Painted Solar System sets in our inventory. You can check out a set here.
Theresa - Rainbow Blocks
Theresa is a talented artists and loves to share that passion with her students. She particularly loves this twist on the classic wooden building blocks set because of the transparent acrylic inlays. Children can build their mathematical foundation by learning about common shapes such as squares, rectangles, right-angle triangles, and half-circles. The artistic angle to this toy comes from the color theory children explore when building with these blocks. When allowing the light to flow through the acrylic windows, children can see how colors look when you allow the light to flow through two different colors (such as lining up blue and red to make purple). Of course, it goes without saying that all types of building blocks are a wonderful material for any Montessori shelf!
These rainbow blocks are currently available in our inventory, and you can check them out here.
Jeffrey - Duplo Lego Set
Our design-focused board member credits his creative passion to Legos. From an early age, Jeff played with Legos and developed his creativity and imagination. One could say that Legos taught him to think outside the box! Kaleidoscope Learning loves Legos for these reasons and more! They are perfect for any child interested in structure building, engineering, open-ended play, world-building, storytelling, and much more. Our Educational Materials Library features the Lego Duplo "Around the World" set, which is perfect for children ages 2-5 due to the larger size of the pieces (compared to the traditional small Lego pieces). The "Around the World" set features a variety of animals, vehicles, trees, building structures, and so much more!
Check out the Lego Duplo "Around the World" set here.
Interested in having these items in your home? Our Educational Materials Library is filled with over 250 wonderful early-childhood focused materials. All of these items are available for check-out by members of the Family Resource Center. Interested in becoming a member? Visit our membership page today!
Visit Us:
Location:
The Family Resource Center
1669 Arcade St.
Saint Paul, MN 55106
Hours:
Tuesday: 5-7 pm
Wednesday: 9-12 pm
Friday: 9-12 pm