Keynote: Pathways LA
Educators ~ Parents ~ Caregivers ~ EC Students
Angela presents her keynotes and workshops using a lecture format and PowerPoint display infused with music and movement activities. Her “ah-ha” moments spark creativity and engage participants from both an early childhood-oriented and an adult learner's perspective. The lengths of her presentations vary, as do the activities, depending upon the audience. She speaks to audiences young and old on the subjects of early childhood development, early math, simple science, creativity, and literacy.
The length of training is negotiable. All attendees are encouraged to participate and collaborate in a break-out or two, creating their own memorable experience and sharing ideas as a practical model. Because of the nature of her activities and the high level of audience participation, her training is not recommended while dining.
All music and book titles are available for convention goodie bags at a discounted bulk rate, the purchase of which can supplement her speaking fee.
Her musical activities are free to use in any training or workshop. Simple notify her by email prior to use and be sure to reference her website as the source on the hand-out.
In-Service Workshop: Sponsored by CM School Supply
-------------------------------------------- COMING SOON
National CACFP
San Diego, CA
In-person Workshop: "STEM in the Kitchen"
Apr 11-13, 2023
cacfp.org
ICES - Mariposa County
April 22, 2023
3-4 hour training
BCDI
Virtual Read Aloud
Multiple school districts, Atlanta, GA
April 27, 2023, 2:30 Pacific Time
-------------------------------------------- MOST RECENT
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CalTech ESTEM Conference
Santa Monica, CA
In-person Workshop:
"Asking Open-Ended Questions"
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YMCA - Los Angeles
Maywood Center for Enriched Studies (MaCES)
In-person Workshops:
Round 1 - Workshops: 10:10-11:00
Round 2 - Workshops: 11:10 -12:00
"My Shadow Moves with Me: Simplifying Science"
"Asking Open-Ended Questions"
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Lassen County Office of Ed., Susanville, CA
In-person training
3 Student and 1 Educator's Workshop
Focus: Literacy
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Imperial County OED
Early Care & Education Programs
In-person team training, 3 hours
"My Shadow Moves with Me: Simplifying Science"
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CACFP - Sacramento, CA
Workshop: STEM in the Kitchen
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BCDI - Black Child Development Institute
- Atlanta, GA, Early Childhood Summit
General Session
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CAAEYC - Pasadena, CA
Workshop: "My Shadow Moves with Me"
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Stanislaus County OED
General Session
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Imperial County OED
Early Care & Education Programs
Dual Workshops
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The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL
Child Development Research Center - Keynote
------------------------- COVID - CANCELLED - BELOW
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FSA Conference, Riverside, CA
Workshop and General Session: "Open-Ended Questions"
Feb. 22, 2020
** Cancelled - COVID!
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HIPPY, Mobile, AL
Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters
(2) Workshops
Apr 27-29, 2020
https://www.hippyusa.org/2020-conference
** Cancelled - COVID!
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Region 9 Head Start STEM Conference, Sacramento, CA
(2) Workshops
May 4-7, 2020
May 5th at 1:30 to 2:30 pm "My Shadow Moves With Me"
May 5th at 3:00 to 4:00 pm "Dollar Store STEM"
** Cancelled - COVID!
Book your 2023
Training Now!
"Angela Russ provides in-service training to educators, parents, and child care providers at our four store locations. Here workshops are engaging, inspiring, and educational. She always has a standing ovation and leaves the attendees begging for more. Angela's quick and informative tips and tools can easily be implemented in any classroom. Her techniques on how to use music and movement to reach and teach are a huge hit with every attendee, and her workshops sell out every time we invite her."
- Jeff Rajcic, Owner, CM School Supply
In-Service Workshop: Sponsored by CM School Supply
"Body Shakes and Brain Waves:
Moving and Learning Through Early Childhood"
Keynote / Workshop
Understand how young children benefit from experiences that lead to the development of neural connections. Learn how to enhance their learning process and reinforce concepts within the Early Learning Framework. What are the benefits of using music and movement activities? Discover ways to enhance comprehension, boost retention, create effective interactions, and stimulate learning in a child's world.
Integrate activities that lay a strong foundation for language, early literacy, mathematical, and social development skills.
Models are presented from an adult-learner's perspective, and workshop attendees demonstrate their understanding by participating in break-outs that inspire originality and the design of age-appropriate activities. Angela helps you put theory into practice and reminds you what it’s like to be a kid again.
Outcomes
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Learn the importance of physical activity as it relates to early childhood brain-based learning and retention.
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Create experiential cognition-boosting activities that are healthy, respectful, supportive, and challenging.
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Discover ways to extend experiences in order to support children in building more complex ideas, making connections to experiences, and developing language skills.
"Math, Motion, and Connecting the Thoughts"
"It's Always Math Time: Connecting the Thoughts and the Dots."
Keynote / Workshop
Educators - Child Care Providers - Parents
It's ALWAYS math time! Early math is the easiest math to explore! Build on what children already know by expanding upon their natural curiosity, desire to help, propensity to imitate, and innate capacity for active, multi-sensory learning. Show me how you put away the forks and spoons. How do you know which shoes go together? Help them recognize and visualize math concepts by linking experiences in their everyday environment. Integrate motor skills, affordable activities, and instructional support to create optimum learning conditions as children blend content strands, connect ideas, solve problems, and make sense of their world.
Whether it’s circle, story, meal, or free-play time, it's ALWAYS math time!
Angela doesn't just explain the whys and the wherefores; she
encourages attendees to practice out-of-the-box thinking and put math into perspective.
Outcomes
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Understand how mathematics is embedded in a child’s natural world through interactions, relationships, activities, and play.
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Identify the five main developmental strands of mathematics.
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Recognize opportunities to reinforce math concepts across disciplines to maximize learning and retention.
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Develop expansion models using non-math skills such as age-appropriate motor skills, musical activities, and social interaction.
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Apply principles of instructional support to promote higher thinking skills and open-ended math interaction every day.
"Angela Russ-Ayon was the highlight of our San Juan Unified School District Early Childhood Professional Development this year. Her dynamic energy and enthusiasm are contagious. In attendance was our entire crew of home-based teachers, infant-toddler teachers, and Head Start preschool educators. The teachers were up moving and grooving right along with Angela, a great sight to see. She presented "Body Shakes and Brain Waves," and we were very impressed with how she tied in the educational components, child development, and smoothly transitioned into uplifting musical activities. Her break-out sessions also encouraged the attendees to get creative and active, and practice age-appropriate "CLASS" principles. Angela is not only an exciting motivational speaker. She brings in a positive, energetic musical experience. Most definitely, a two thumbs up training for our staff. The evaluations they sent back were terrific too. One infant toddler teacher commented on how she is going to bring her CD on her home visits and share it with the families. We are desirous of having her back in August to present to our kindergarten and first-grade teams."
Jennifer Berdrow, TOSA, for San Juan USD
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“My Shadow Moves With Me:
Simplifying Science!”
Workshop
Encourage young children to explore science early by observing, predicting, and seeking evidence by experimenting. Preschoolers learn best by playing and doing. Provide them opportunities to investigate their natural world. Build on existing foundations and connect STEM concepts in various core subject areas across domains using the physical science of light and shadows as an example. Create curriculum webs that help organize and plan scientific activities. Discover how to design and display simple preschool science stations that emphasize hands-on experiences and require minimal explanation from you.
Angela doesn't just explain the whys and the wherefores; she encourages attendees to practice out-of-the-box thinking and introduce science all day long. ** Additional science concepts are covered depending upon time permitting.
Outcomes
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Build knowledge, skills, and confidence in early science learning experiences for children and families.
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Learn how to help children explore the relationship between actions and outcomes and make age-appropriate connections to their experiences.
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Prepare an environment that provides opportunities for children to think like a scientist.
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Learn how intentional instructional support and web planning promote development across domains.
"The Art of Asking Open-Ended Questions:
Supporting Thinking, Learning, and Developing"
Workshop
Learn how to intentionally support instruction by asking open-ended questions. Use open inquiry to encourage children’s curiosity, creativity, and reasoning skills. Not just any questions will do. Equip children to solve problems and understand their world by asking questions that promote critical thinking. Help them relate new information to past or present experiences while developing speech and language skills, building confidence in their abilities, learning to express their thoughts and ideas, and expanding upon what they already know. Accommodate development across domains, especially during observations for assessment. Walk away with solid questions that encourage children to pause, think, experiment, and reflect. We'll put theory into practice using preschool and kindergarten scenarios.
Available for a bulk discount is her informative resource guide, The BIG Book of Open-Ended Questions: Intentionally Supporting Young Children in Learning. PowerPoint presentation. Screen and projector are required.
Outcomes
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Understand how open-ended questions foster children’s high-level thinking skills
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Recognize the structure of close-ended vs. open-ended questions
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Learn how intentional instructional support promotes development across domains
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Understand the difference between encouragement and praise
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Practice developing open-ended questions in various scenarios
"Jump, Quack, Listen, Scribble, Track:
Early Language and Literacy"
Keynote / Workshop
Early literacy encompasses much more than learning the alphabet, making letter sounds, and zipping through a book. It begins the moment a child is born, making caregivers the gateway to children's school readiness and future academic success. Learn ways to help promote young children's interest in language and literacy using their own curiosity, activities, and memorable experiences. Discover the many ways to read a book. Explore and build upon children's observation of print in their natural world. Strengthen the role you play in fostering learning and improving important literacy skills.
Angela doesn't just explain the whys and the wherefores, she encourages attendees to practice out-of-the-box thinking with novel activities and active participation.
"Dollar Store STEM: Creative and Affordable
Ways to Support Early Learning"
Parent and Caregiver Workshop
A creative way to encourage parents, home providers, and preschool staff to engage with young children in and around school and home using affordable tools and easy STEM concepts. Inspire simple lessons and extensions involving science, technology, engineering, and math in a young child’s real world. Learn how to make STEM learning exciting, educational, and inexpensive in the early years by making the Dollar Store your go-to resource. Spend $5 or $50. Includes great ideas to share during outreach and "homework" that promote motor and cognitive development. Encourage building, predicting, experimenting, tinkering, observing, exploring, problem-solving, and creating! No excuses.
"Just Don’t Bore Them:
Embracing Creativity in Preschool Education"
Keynote / Workshop
Explore your creative side. Young children are not sedentary learners. As a child associates learning with fun and musical play, abstract concepts become concrete. Learn how to introduce educational concepts, improve cognitive skills, and capture attention by boosting your creative side. Through play, children improve tracking, eye-hand coordination, language skills, listening skills, and much more.
Work with affordable props such as laces and scarves (time permitting). Learn how to engage children with music and motor skills by physically interpreting concepts, expanding on existing activities, breaking out of the box, and freeing your imagination.
"Cultivating Meaningful Connections
in a Child's World."
Understand how different areas of development are interconnected and influence one another, the most common of which are Physical (motor skills), Cognitive, Social and Emotional, and Language Development. Recognize that children are multifaceted beings with interconnected abilities. Learn the importance of integrating multiple subjects and spanning domains by planning and creating curriculum webs. In doing so, you support children's overall growth and help them develop a well-rounded set of skills and competencies.
"Let's Do This!"
Family Engagement
Parents actively engage with their young children (Pre-K, preschool/kindergarten) and participate in simple, fun activities that build cognitive skills: clapping games, manipulating scarves and laces, and parachute play. Parents are introduced to activities that can be practiced at home. While learning about early childhood development, they are encouraged to participate, create, design, discuss, move, think, reflect, and share their ideas.
"Read and Write Right!"
Kindergarten - Elementary Grades
High School - Collegiate
Author Visits
Angela shares the developmental process and challenges of publishing one of her picture books, as she walks children and would-be writers through the dos and don'ts of creating one while using "We Eat Food That's Fresh" as an example. Using creative imagery, she informs them about the intricacies of the publishing world such as storyboards, illustration, text placement, identifiers, etc., then finales with the reading of her book (time permitting). Important points and presentation lengths are modified for age-appropriateness.
Available for mature audiences at a bulk discount is her informative resource guide, How to Self-Publish a Children's Picture Book using Amazon KDP.
PowerPoint presentation. Screen and projector are required.
"The Nutrition Mission"
Author Visit
Schools ~ Libraries ~ Special Events
Preschool thru 3rd Grade Presentation
Angela features one of her picture books and walks young children through the importance of eating right and making healthy choices using verbal responses, fun imagery they can relate to, and songs such as "Does a Pumpkin Pump," I'm Growing," and "Shake, Mix, Pound, Roll." Includes: tasting new foods, eating a rainbow of colors, drinking more water, eating too much sugar, portion control, and helping parents in the kitchen... time permitting. Presentations are modified for age-appropriateness.
SCHOOLS & OTHER VENUES - PowerPoint presentation, verbally interactive, with an infusion of activity. Screen and projector are required.
LIBRARIES - Angela forgoes the projector in lieu of colored cards. Verbally interactive, with an infusion of activity. For smaller audiences.
Her interactive performances and author readings are best presented to children aged 3-8, but her author visits are geared toward children early primary through high school and would-be adult writers. She modifies her approach to make her presentations age-appropriate, and captivate her audience.
"Sing! Sang! Sung!"
Early Childhood ~ Interactive Performance
Accompanied by music soundtracks and using age-appropriate props, Angela steps children through a collection of songs that nurture their silly side, promote creative play, capture their attention, and get them moving. An engaging performance for small and large groups of supervised children in a variety of settings, including libraries, schools, bookstores, community centers, and performing arts centers.
Optional add-ons...
... a reading of one of her award-winning picture books.
... parachute play for smaller groups of 20 or less.
Parachute Play at Pretend City, Irvine, CA
Angela Russ presented at our 2019 spring workshop. Center staff and family child care providers enjoyed Angela's positive energy with an energetic and informative guide to teach children simple math skills through song and play. Participants were sad to see the day end and are already asking for a repeat training! Child care staff left the training better prepared and rejuvenated to share what they learned. An amazing day with a skilled presenter.
Debbie Guy, Plumas Rural Services
Coordinator Child Care Resource & Referral Program, Quincy, CA 4-2019
SING! PLAY! MOVE! LEARN! TEACH!