Kalamazoo RESA Head Start has been awarded a grant of $15,000 from the State of Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs (MCACA). The award helps fund The Art in Head StART, a program that develops kindergarten-readiness skills and foundational arts skills through music, movement and dance. Artists trained in early childhood programs teach music and dance, providing weekly lessons to preschool children enrolled in Head Start classrooms countywide. This sequential program is a partnership between KRESA Head Start, Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra (KSO), Crescendo Academy of Music (CAM) and KRESA’s Education for the Arts (EFA).

“The Art in Head StART significantly deepens the students’ learning in the arts while increasing their cognitive, physical and social-emotional development,” said Rachel Roberts, KRESA Director of Preschool Programs.

Specifically, the MCACA grant funding supports two programs: Marvelous Music! and Letters & Locomotors. Letters & Locomotors is a project of EFA that helps three-year-olds learn early literacy skills through dance and movement with music. Marvelous Music!, an initiative of the KSO and CAM, for is a music-with-movement program for four-year-olds that builds a spectrum of school-readiness skills.

“We are proud to offer these important and meaningful arts experiences to our preschoolers,” Roberts said. “These programs wouldn’t be possible without MCACA; our community sponsors, the Burdick-Thorne Foundation and the PNC Foundation; and our partners at EFA, the KSO and CAM,” she said.

For more information about preschool programs, visit dreambigstartsmall.org.