Provide Art Materials for Children

This campaign will end on December 31, 2023

More school districts in Oregon are offering preschool than ever before. Teaching Preschool Partners partners with school districts to learn from their youngest children and to reimagine what classroom practices can look like in the preschool and elementary grades.

We have found that when teachers witness young children playing with rich materials, they begin to challenge conventional ideas of what teaching and learning can be. Teachers become attuned to the assets and capabilities of young children and notice their repertoires for taking on the world, rather than seeing their deficits and how they are “unready.”

With this in mind, Teaching Preschool Partners is running our 2023 Winter Donation Campaign. We are pledging to distribute Material Kits to our partner classrooms who would benefit from having rich materials in their classrooms. For every $200 we raise, we will provide up to 25 material kits to classroom teachers in Oregon!

About Teaching Preschool Partners

Teaching Preschool Partners invites school district professionals to reimagine education and to listen closely to young children. Utilizing an Asset-Based Playful Inquiry approach to learning, we partner with teachers to offer approaches that build up children’s agency. As our partnerships grow, schools become models and spaces of inspiration for broader change within the district and for curious professionals across the state of Oregon. We challenge deficit orientations to young children and pursue equity and inclusion by supporting practices that honor and see children’s existing knowledge and backgrounds as powerful competencies.

Starting in 2014, our longest partnerships have been in Parkrose School District and Gladstone School District. Since then, TPP has developed additional partnerships with Beaverton School District, Greater Albany Public School District, North Clackamas School District, Portland Public Schools, and are developing partnerships in other regions across Oregon.

TPP also produces and develops guides, resources, and inspiration for teachers through our Resource Library, Field Guide, and our Documenting Learning with Habits of Mind assessment platform. We are also developing resources for families who are interested in participating in playful inquiry with their own children in their homes.

We invite you to join our movement as this donation campaign supports our organization in addition to providing materials for Oregon’s classrooms!

How our Donation Campaign Works

All donation sizes are welcome. No donation is too small. For every two hundred dollars raised in the campaign, a kit will be sent out to one of our partner district classrooms.

This means that if we hit our $5,000 fundraising goal, we will be supporting 25 classrooms of students in experiencing a kit of materials to explore.

This is a sample "Loose Parts" kit we have provided in the past.

More about Kits

For this donation campaign we will be offering a “Color Kit.” The Color Kit offers children a chance to explore the possibilities of color including mixing, associating colors with emotions and stories, exploring shades of color including skin tones, and much much more.

Teaching Preschool Partners provides guidance and professional learning experiences with teachers so that they can identify how to take advantage of using rich materials in the classroom and to offer rigorous and ambitious experiences that build on children’s natural curiosities and expressive abilities. We see materials as a form of “multimodal” communication where children can express complex ideas and stories. Materials also open up new avenues for inclusion as children find ways to share themselves within the classroom community.

The Color kit includes a resource guide that supports teacher practice by offering illustrations and examples for how to "set the table" in classrooms.

Thank you!

Please consider joining our email list to stay updated on Teaching Preschool Partner's impact in Oregon and to stay updated on the status of our Campaign!

Thank you for your consideration. We hope you support Teaching Preschool Partners and help us achieve our vision of a transformed public school experience for young children!