Community Partnerships - Little Folks School

At Little Folks School we embrace partnerships with community organizations! Whether arts-focused partnerships or service learning experiences, our students greatly benefit from the work we do with organizations in the greater DC area. Our partnerships with Wolf Trap Institute for the Performing Arts, Martha's Table, and the Capital Area Food Bank are strong traditions at LFS. We also welcome new ideas for community partnerships and learning experiences for our students. If you have an idea about a service learning partnership, please reach out to Karen Puente, Director of Auxiliary Programs and Special Events at kpuente@littlefolks.org.

Wolf Trap Residency

Since the year 2000, Little Folks School has been fortunate to collaborate with the Education Department of the Wolf Trap Performing Arts Foundation. A professional Wolf Trap Teaching Artist partners with a classroom teacher to plan and teach arts-integrated experiences designed to support children’s achievement and classroom curriculum goals.

During the residency, children participate in arts integrated lessons that support developmentally appropriate learning and concepts as well as creative, expression and problem solving, critical thinking, communication and collaboration. The goal of the residency is two-fold: students benefit from enriching arts experiences and teachers learn new creative ways to deliver curriculum content.

Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts has long been recognized as a national model for arts integration in early childhood classrooms. Visit www.wolftrap.org/education for more information.

Sandwich Patrol

At Little Folks School, we teach children that "we take care of each other." This doesn't just apply to the classroom but we also want children to learn to take care of their greater community. We often seek out ways to teach the importance of giving and taking care of others who are in need. One of our new (or revisited) initiatives is "Sandwich Patrol," where children make sandwiches and trail mix bags for Martha's Table to distribute to people who are food insecure. Every other month, LFS families provide the ingredients to make almost two hundred sandwiches and trail mix. Children and their grown-ups put together sandwiches and bags of trail mix in the morning before drop-off. Later in the morning, classes visit with small groups of children to continue the work until all of our ingredients are used up! Leading up to this day and during the day, parents and teachers have conversations with children about the importance of helping other people.

Food Drives

Each November, we collect non-perishable food items to contribute to an area food bank. This is an activity which children can participate in hands-on way by selecting food, carrying it to school themselves, and placing it in a collection basket. This very concrete experience, like the “sandwich patrol,” brings the spirit of giving alive for young children. This past year we were able to contribute over 200 cans of food to the Capital Area Foodbank