Please email imagine@theatredirect.on.ca to indicate your participation. All workshops by donation.
Ready for Reading at Toronto Public Library
with Tara Stadius
Saturday, May 17th at 2:00 pm
Wychwood Barns
601 Christie Street
Parents and caregivers are a child’s first and best teachers, and home is where your child begins to learn. Through fun, easy, everyday activities that you do with your preschool child (from birth to five years) – talking, playing, singing, reading, writing — you help them build important early literacy skills. The Library has the research-basedprograms, services, resources, spaces and expert staff to support you and to help you get your child Ready for Reading.
Papa Play
with Jonathan Gould
Sunday, May 18th at 10:00 am (before the performance of H2O)
Wychwood Barns
601 Christie Street
Yo, dads! Looking for more ways to entertain your little ones and engage with them through play? This workshop will focus on sharing fun activities that you can do at home, no screens or batteries required. We will learn and play with performance techniques drawn from body percussion, mime, puppetry, and anything else participants would like to share. The goal of the workshop is for you and your children to discover new ways to delight each other.
This session is designed for dads and kids aged two to six years old.
Teach Them Your Language!
Tips and tricks to teach kids your mother language while having fun!
with Yecid Ortega
Teaching your children your mother language is easier than you think. In this highly interactive, hands-on workshop parents will learn tips and strategies to practice their mother language at home by using day-to-day objects and toys available at home and developing and incorporating into daily routines language activities that are meaningful and fun.
The workshop will be facilitated by Yecid Ortega, early years language learning and literacy expert.
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A Visit with Barbara Reid
with Barbara Reid!
Tuesday, May 13 at 10:00 (before the performance of In Black and White, a Yellow Line)
WeePlay Space at Tarragon Studios
30 Bridgman Avenue
Meet the acclaimed children’s author and experience her much-loved Zoe stories and her latest book, Welcome Baby, Welcome!
What Should I Feed my Toddler?
with Lianne Phillipson-Webb of Sprout Right
Friday, May 16th at 10:00 am (before performance of In Black & White, a Yellow Line
WeeFestival WeePlay Space at Tarragon Studios
30 Bridgman Avenue
With your toddler on the go, meal times can be tricky. Come learn what they need to keep them going at this age and how to get it into them!
Topics Include:
How to avoid a picky eater
What are ‘super foods’ for your toddler?
What nutrients your toddler needs for development
Great sources of important nutrient for good health and strong immunity
Biographies of Workshop Leaders
Jonathan Gould is the Chair of Business, Arts and Design at George Brown College’s School of Continuing Education. He has two boys, aged 3 and 6, and draws on his past training in clown, improv, and commedia dell’arte to entertain them. Jonathan has been a volunteer Big Brother for the past ten years — and encourages you to try it, too! — and he is that guy who spontaneously juggles potatoes to make your kids laugh.
Lianne Phillipson-Webb is the founder of Sprout Right, a company that specializes in pre-conception, prenatal, and postnatal nutrition for women, as well as good food and health for the whole family. With over ten years of experience, Lianne is a registered nutritionist, author, member of the International Organization of Nutrition Consultants, and mother of two.
Lianne graduated with honours from the Institute of Optimum Nutrition in London, England, and has since shared her knowledge with thousands of women and their families through personal consultations and numerous television appearances on Canada AM, Breakfast Television, Rogers, and CHCH Morning Live. She also contributes to Today’s Parent magazine and many online parenting websites, runs Sprout Right’s interactive workshops and one-of-a-kind Mommy Chef cooking classes, and produced an instructional DVD series.
Lianne has a number of interests outside of nutrition. She is the mother of two daughters, and an active contributor to their school programs, as well as an IFR reflexologist, aromatherapist, and Reiki master.
Barbara Reid is one of Canada’s most beloved illustrators and authors. Born in 1957, she has lived her life in Toronto, Ontario. She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design, with a focus on illustration, and it was for a class assignment that she first experimented with plasticine to make a dimensional picture. She graduated from OCAD in 1980 and began working as a freelance illustrator. Her first picture book illustrated in plasticine was The New Baby Calf, by Edith Newlin Chase, which was shortlisted for the Canada Council Prize for Illustration. More than twenty books later, other awards include the UNICEF Ezra Jack Keats Award, The Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Award, the Mr. Christie’s Book award, and the Elizabeth Cleaver Award. The Party, which she wrote and illustrated, won the Governor General’s Award for Illustration; Fox Walked Alone was named to the IBBY International Honour List and was a Blue Spruce Award selection. Most recently, she received Amelia Frances Howard Gibbon Award for Perfect Snow. Her books have been published in Canada, The USA, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Holland, Finland, Norway, China, Germany, Brazil, Korea and Thailand.
Tara Stadius is a Services Specialist at the Toronto Public Library working on projects to develop and promote the library’s “Ready for Reading” programs, services, resources and spaces. She is the lead author of the Library’s early literacy publication called Let’s Get Ready for Reading: A fun and easy guide to help kids become readers.