Little Acorns Fine Arts Pre-School is located in Chestermere doesn’t look like a normal pre-school with bright colors and a chain link fence around the yard where children are seen playing and therefore parents driving past don’t even realize it exists.
But it does exist and has been as it begins its 13th year of operation. In fact, this pre-school does not just exist – it thrives as shown by the 800 or so children that have been through the school and enjoyed its programs over the years.
Marilyn King has been teaching pre-school for 39 years, starting in Calgary. When she came to Chestermere Ms. King decided she wanted one of her own. With this idea in mind she went to the town and told them she wanted to build a pre-school and at that time there were few houses in the area. A woman from the town came and helped find three locations where the pre-school could be built – by the canal (not really the best place unless your children wore life jackets all the time), across from the Prairie Waters Elementary School (at the time they were building the St. Gabriel’s school and it was a dangerous construction site), and the site where the pre-school is now. And so Little Acorns came into being.
There are five teachers that work with different age groups combined, providing a brother sister sort of learning and teaching environment. The children have two yards that they play in – the side yard where they grow plants and learn about them, and the backyard where it’s not perfectly manicured – a place where a child can dig a hole and pretend that buried treasure lurks beneath.
Marilyn King informed me that they have two different fine arts programs – Little Maestros and Little Masters.
Little Maestros is a program that learns about the musical arts. Students from the high schools will come by during the week with their instruments and play and the children are allowed to press the buttons and pluck the strings and satisfy any curiosities they have about the musical world.
Little Masters is the arts part of the program. Throughout the program they learn about the way the great masters painted. And using this knowledge they create their own works of art. But none of that cookie-cutter art that’s so common in society; different materials are provided so that each child can create art that is uniquely his/her own.
The purpose of the open house on Saturday is to give interested parents a chance to tour the pre-school facilities and determine if it will be suitable for their children.
Little Acorns Fine Arts Pre-School – come and see for yourself.
