Expect to learn a skill to amaze your family at the next LIVE Zoom presentation!
Expect to learn a skill to amaze your family at the next LIVE Zoom presentation!“Ta Dah! Circus as a Teaching Tool”
with Jessica Hentoff, Artistic/Executive Director, Circus Harmony
Monday, April 20, 10:30am EDT/7:30am PDT. (Registered conference attendees will receive Zoom details by email.)
The best way to educate is to be entertaining and the best way to entertain is to be educational! For many children, sitting still while learning is difficult. Experiential and fun learning has been proven to be more effective. Circus arts works across ages, backgrounds, and school subjects! You do not have to be an acrobat or a tightrope walker yourself to apply this fun, fantastic, flexible art form!
Circus arts are an amazing activity that can be used to teach physical education, science, math, language, history and more! It is also perfect for teaching character education. Circus helps children learn concepts in a new and fun way that they will remember and apply. This holistic approach to learning not only teaches academic or character concepts, but, at the same time, helps children develop their physical literacy, strength, flexibility, hand-eye coordination, and spatial awareness. In addition, students can learn how to present themselves in public, an all-around useful life skill! Circus is most obvious to use as an alternative approach to physical education. It is non-competitive and is comprised of several genres so there literally is something for everyone.
Our “Play Hour” presenter is Jessica Hentoff, the artistic/executive director of Circus Harmony, a social circus based in St. Louis, Missouri. Circus Harmony is a non-profit social circus 
organization that uses circus arts to motivate social change. It is both an arts education and a youth development organization. They believe that circus teaches the art of life- while children are learning circus arts, they are also learning life skills like focus, persistence, teamwork.
“Play Hour” is a series of LIVE Zoom sessions every Monday and Friday in April at 10:30am EDT/7:30am PDT as part of the 2020 ONLINE Conference on the Value of Play. All “Play Hour” LIVE Zoom presentations will be recorded and included in our online conference launch on May 1, so don’t fret if you miss any!
The Conference on the VALUE of Play
The Play Conference, as it is commonly known, is an annual educational conference presented by the US Play Coalition. The latest research and practices in the field of play are presented at the conference, which brings together play researchers, park and recreation professionals, educators, health scientists, architects, landscape architects, designers, planners, business and community leaders, psychologists, physicians and parents from across the U.S. and beyond. The three day event has been moved ONLINE for 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is our first-ever online Play Conference!