Journey to a Trauma Informed Life

PLAYTime

What is PLAYtime?

PLAYtime uses the arts as a vehicle to make a meaningful connection with the stories from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library with, in and through the use of song, drama, movement, and visual arts, stories come alive and create purposeful shared reading experiences.

Inspiration & Imagination are the recurring themes throughout the three-year cycle of PLAYtime and include:

  • love of reading and learning
  • regard for diversity of people, their roles, culture, and environment
  • promotion of self-esteem and confidence
  • appreciation of art and aesthetics as outlined by the Imagination Library
  • rhyme and rhythm
  • repetition and predictability
  • playful sound
  • “self-help” activities
  • Use of real photo illustration
  • nursery rhymes
  • colors, letters, numbers
  • values and character
  • issues—fear, conflict, love, safety     
  • hero, complication, resolution
  • diversity of others—faces, environment
  • play, humor, fun
  • poetry     
  • school preparation and readiness
  • science—non-fiction
  • folk tales
  • thank you, appreciation

The PLAYtime Journey

For four years, The Erie Playhouse, with the support of the United Way, has grown this literacy program and is now present in 20 children centers and school classrooms supporting literacy through PLAYtime in our hometown. Over the course of three years, the same child will have spent 144 shared reading experiences with the Imagination Library stories using PLAYtime curriculum lessons. In the past four years over 2,000 children in at-risk settings will have been nurtured by PLAYtime, listening, attending, questioning, and retelling these tales at an increase success rate of 95%. Teachers and facilitators have grown in their storytelling connections by participating in PLAYtime as well.   

Workshops for parents and children of the program increase reading at home. On stage, The Erie Playhouse welcomes PLAYtime as they present shows based on the Imagination Library completely free to the community followed by fun activities to engage the whole family!  

In addition, facilitators of PLAYtime immerse themselves as partners in the schools and children centers they are connected to, guest appearing at their family game nights, carnivals, red carpet events, and even facilitating at graduations!
 

PLAYtime is committed to the community creating a truly meaningful relationship with its families.

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