Hello, we are so happy that you’ve decided to bring Cabinet of Wonder into your classroom! We’ve created this video series, website, and companion teaching guides as helpful enrichment tools for you. This program will provide hours of amusement, engaging discussion, and learning opportunities for your children. We hope that you will come to think of Miss Natalie, the CSO musicians, and the Manual Cinema puppeteers as welcome visiting teaching artists, and that our sweet cast of children will naturally blend into your class. We hope your Cabinet of Wonder experience will become a treasured part of your school year.

Children at the Center
We believe that children have a yearning and natural capacity for beauty. Too often access to the arts in early childhood is limited. Cabinet of Wonder was created to help fill this void. It provides an inventive age-appropriate introduction to music, poetry, and theatrical arts that recognizes the emotional intelligence of young children. Cabinet of Wonder was not manufactured in a laboratory; it grew naturally in the field from actual classroom experiences. Children are at its center; they were its inspiration and co-creators throughout. With Cabinet of Wonder, we honor the magical, enduring, creative spirit of children.

Slow, Quiet, Gentle
The world you are about to enter was created by a group of artists, educators, and early childhood specialists who share a common concern. We worry that children are being oversaturated by fast-paced technology and media that doesn’t allow their imaginations to thrive. We’ve taken a different approach, one that is slow, quiet, and gentle. We’ve chosen shadow puppetry over digital animation. Our music is performed by real people with real instruments. Our sets are handmade of painted wood and cardboard, and all our costumes were patiently stitched. With a calm and measured pace, we draw children closer and allow for thoughtful observation and wonder. Through storytelling, dialogue, and the exchange of ideas, we foster a love of language. We teach to the whole child, engaging intellect, creativity, emotion, and the body. And we leave plenty of room for play.

Taken as a Whole
The Cabinet of Wonder program was designed to provide teaching content for a full school year with a suggested sequence for introducing the material. Although you may opt to use only parts of the music, videos, or teaching guides, the program will be most effective when taken as a whole.

A Time and Place
We recommend that Cabinet of Wonder occupy a fixed place in your weekly calendar, so that children know it’s a special time set aside for them and Mother Goose. Create a special space devoted to her family of characters, decorated with your children’s artwork and our free posters. Arrange your own Cabinet of Wonder shelf, with souvenirs of your trips together to Rhyming Town (a pumpkin, a candlestick holder, a bowl and spoon, a scepter, a wind-up clock, mouse ears, a tray of tarts, a garland of paper hearts, a toy trumpet and fiddle, etc.). Make a collection of simple costume pieces (aprons, bonnets, collars, wings, capes, and crowns). By the year’s end, these items will represent the rhymes your children have come to know and love.

Pacing the Sensory Experience
The Cabinet of Wonder website offers up a carnival for the senses: songs with lush musical arrangements and videos full of fancy costumes and colorful sets. But we advise that you reveal all this excitement to your children in stages, pacing the experience through a series of steps listed below.

1. Read and recite the rhyme to your children. Sound out the words and have a discussion about their meanings. Feel out the rhythm of the poem together, line by line. Use call and response. Identify the rhyming word pairs. Define any new vocabulary words or unfamiliar figures of speech. Use props to illustrate if they are helpful.

2. Sing the rhyme to your children.  

3. Play the recording of the song. Play it again. Allow your children time to absorb what they’ve heard. Ask them how the song makes them feel. Ask if they can “see” the characters, the settings, or actions of the rhyme with their mind’s eye. You might even ask them to draw what they have imagined. Play the song again. Identify the instruments you hear, find them pictured in The Orchestra section of the website. Talk about how these instruments make their unique sounds. 

4. Dance to the song. See what sort of motions the music inspires. Dance all together in a circle. Let children take turns in the spotlight, dancing in the middle of your circle. Partner and line dance, or dance with silk scarves. 

5. Look at portraits of the rhyme characters. Discuss all the details in the photographs and how they compare to what your children had imagined.

6. Watch the video of Miss Natalie teaching the rhyme.

7. Watch the music video for the rhyme.

8. Explore the discussion prompts in the teaching guide.

9. Enjoy the games and activities in the teaching guide.