TRICA’s Preschool of the Arts is informed and inspired by the best of Fred Rogers, Montessori, Reggio Emilia and Waldorf traditions, and National Dance Institute, of which TRICA is an affiliate. With Arts and Humanities as a foundation, we educate children to become confident, expressive, balanced, passionate, driven, resilient, and creative problem-solvers.
TRICA combines the arts, master teachers and a meaningful curriculum with a profound power to inspire children toward a higher standard of excellence and creative expression that pours over into every other area of their lives: their relationships, ambitions for life, and how they impact their community.
The Preschool day is filled with the arts, including song, dance, physical activity, artistic performances and interactive outdoor experiences. Kindergarten readiness is a strong focus; math and science are taught through the lens of Arts and Humanities. Our teachers employ Conscious Discipline and Mindfulness: a wonderful set of tools that help children understand their feelings to regain a sense of calm and self-control, contributing to higher emotional intelligence that will stay with them for life. Parents can tell a difference.
By the time the children finish TRICA’s preschool, they truly love learning and are confident and excited for kindergarten.
Art IS education.
Arts are the perfect means of expression for a young child’s emotions, intellect, social being and physical body. TRICA’s Preschool of the Arts embraces all disciplines of art for children, including obscure and lost art forms. Students may play in a Hillbilly Jug Band or use wire, salvaged fabric, needle and thread to make a Guatemalan Worry Doll to take away their worries while they sleep at night.
Children have faith, they have wonder. They have spiritual thoughts. They’re open to an array of answers to life’s questions. In this moment when their personalities are developing, THIS is when education needs to be at its finest. TRICA Preschool of the Arts explores matters of the soul, of morality, of right and wrong. Sometimes it is the children who lead these conversations and discoveries, and we as teachers are all too happy to follow.
TRICA’s Preschool of the Arts puts creativity at the center of learning, and TRICA’s highly imaginative castle-like learning environment is a showstopper.
Space to create, invent and perform is ample within the walls of TRICA’s rescued 12,000 ft cathedral-turned-children’s-arts institute, formerly listed as one of the “Top Ten Most Threatened and Endangered Historic Sites in Idaho”. The inspired new center for learning and the arts occupies a quarter of a city block in Boise’s vibrant Hyde Park District within close proximity to neighborhood elementary schools and city parks.
Nature is art.
Art doesn’t exist without nature, and no Boise child should exist without the outdoors! Our wonderfully located Children’s Arts Institute serves as a base camp for walking field trips and stimulating daily interactions with the natural world.
Parents and Our Community of Creativity
Parental involvement is the best indicator of a student’s success in school. As part of TRICA’s Preschool of the Arts, families gain a sense of belonging to a community of creativity. They’ll hold shared memories of the dance floor at Family Dance Parties, and come to know world-class guest artists on a first-name basis with children taking turns inviting artists over for dinner.
Parents are invited to help make props, style hair for a show, fire the pottery, paint the set or join us for our daily exercise. Every one of these opportunities for hands-on parent involvement is a chance to model the TRICA pedagogy for continuation at home. Through joyful involvement, it’s hoped our preschool parents will become more artful and animated—communicative lifelong learners themselves who are more likely to freely express their feelings and try new things as a family.
