A collaboration between the San Antonio Museum of Art and Pre-K 4SA Educators
Beginning this fall, Pre-K teachers can check out Early Childhood Traveling Trunks for free from the San Antonio Museum of Art. The trunks have been funded by the City of San Antonio’s Department for Culture and Creative Development and are a collaboration with Pre-K 4SA educators.
Designed for ages 3-6, each Traveling Trunk contains 10 playful themes for introducing art to children and developing visual literacy: Animals, Colors, Counting, Faces, Food, Nature, Opposites, Shapes, Textures, and Things that Go! The trunks offer a bilingual curriculum booklet for teachers and include a range of touch materials, art activities, full-color posters and digital images of works of art from the Museum’s round-the-world collection.
“The trunks have been designed so that an early childhood teacher feels comfortable teaching with art,” said Lindsey Smith, Teacher and School Programs Manager for the San Antonio Museum of Art. “They encourage play, collaboration, vocabulary growth, and develop fine motor skills.” Discussion questions are in each trunk, so teachers can guide students to observe, identify, and make connections with art before engaging in open-ended art-making with media and materials similar to the works of art they discussed.
Early Childhood Traveling Trunks are free and available for checkout for up to six weeks.
The San Antonio Museum of Art is committed to serving visitors of all ages. Additional programs and resources for Early Childhood audiences include:
- Playdates (ages 2 to 4)
- Art Crawl (for caregivers with babies 0-18 months)
- First Sundays for Families
- Arte Kids (5 bilingual board books that explore the Museum’s collection, ages 0-4)
Pre-K 4 SA is a full-day prekindergarten program for four-year-olds living in the City of San Antonio. Pre-K 4 SA is free for qualifying students and also accepts tuition-paying students. Pre-K 4 SA provides students with quality instruction provided by highly qualified teachers in the field of Early Childhood Education. Children who attend the Centers are taught the Pre-Kindergarten Guidelines as mandated by the Texas Education Agency through innovative lessons. Teachers use a variety of researched, validated best practices and technology as developmentally appropriate for four-year-olds. Lessons include academic focus based on student interest and are presented in ways that are relevant to young children. Lessons also emphasize the development of executive function, an essential life-long skill.
##
The San Antonio Museum of Art is housed in the historic Lone Star Brewery on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio Riverwalk. The collection contains more than 25,000 works representing 5,000 years of history and cultures from around the world.
