WonderSCAPES Preschool & Early Learning Exhibit

Architecture Is Fun was perfect for this project.
~ Mindy Shrago, Executive Director, Young At Art

A Young At Art Wonderland of Early Learning: Where Imagination Begins
WonderSCAPES is an arts and play-based environment at Young At Art Museum with a certified preschool dedicated to early childhood development and early learners, ages four and under. The exhibit gallery and preschool are born from the collaboration of the poetic vision of award-winning illustrator DeLoss McGraw and the creative interpretation of Architecture Is Fun.

WonderSCAPES is designed to nurture and celebrate a child’s own role in learning, in mastering their environment, and in seeing the interconnections in the world around them. Alice’s Pool stimulates fantasy play and builds vocabulary in a water exhibit incorporating the mosaics of contemporary artist Alejandro Romero. The March Hare’s House & Tea Party convey the concept of scale through sights and sounds, a place for role-play and imagination. Alice’s Art & Games encourages children to create art, copy geometric shapes, identify colors and use letters to accompany their illustrations. Alice’s Reading Forest provides a soft-sculptured area for parents to read with children or socialize with other parents in a comfortable environment.

With space at a premium, these flexible spaces become a budding artist studio, accredited preschool, summer camp, and on weekends, the preschool classroom doubles as the WonderSCAPES birthday party room. All of these magical spaces reflect the early learning that they support and share the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland aesthetic, which aptly lends it themes of curiosity and discovery, identity and growth of a child. In a pastiche of color and poetry, this early learning experience encourages young children to traverse artistic and exploratory domains: wordplay, gestures, drawings, painting, music, sensory play, dramatic play, movement, early physics play, all contributing to learning and literacy.

WonderSCAPES is a special place to share in instructive and creative ways. Here, children are free to imagine, investigate, and learn in cause and effect hands-on ways. Parents and caregivers have the opportunity to interact, socialize, and find support and resources on early learning that helps guide children on their wonder-filled journey.

Owner:  Young At Art Museum
Interior Architecture, Public Space & Exhibit Design:  Architecture Is Fun, Inc.
Curated Art, Furnishings, & Sourcing of Designed-Objects:  Fun Finders
Artist:  DeLoss McGraw
Mosaic Artist:  Alejandro Romero
Location:  Davie/Florida
Status:  Completed 2012
Photography:  © Doug Snower Photography & Emma Exley