Spark the creative fire of your imagination with a fun, inspiring, motivating workshop with Kia!

Workshops are based on Kia's book, Making Music with Your Child, and highlight simple, effective activities to build musical skills and awareness. Teachers and children are provided with ways to encourage freedom, self-expression and individuality. In her workshops, Kia creates a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere by using color, sound, movement, imagination, and improvisation.

Kia's teaching method nourishes the whole child, cultivating intuition, reasoning, self-discipline, and responsibility. It promotes the processes of thinking, creating and evaluating, and reinforces self-esteem and the joy of learning. It also helps children make decisions where there are no standard answers and gives them tools to expand and communicate by building the confidence necessary to express themselves creatively in all aspects of their lives. This fosters a lifelong appreciation and support for the arts.

Workshop activities may include:

• Warm ups with sound breathing
• Hands-on percussion
• Painting
• Improvisation
• Creative story-writing using colors, sound, and words
• Self-discovery through movement
• Individual work, pair work, and small group work

What are the benefits?

• Build greater awareness of Self
• Encourage spontaneity, receptivity, and positive reactivity
• Through the use of sound, colors, and movement, build the child's ability to access and express their creativity in all forms, and in so doing, improve their written and oral communication and self-expression skills
• Improve focusing skills
• Explore elements of communication with themselves and others that promote a safer environment and greater wellness
• Improve memory
• Stimulate creative story-building
• Enhance the child's ability to incorporate all learning modalities

To learn more and/or to schedule a workshop, contact Kia at 602-789-9313 or email her at info@MusicKia.com.

Testimonials:

"Thank you for your presentation. Your message about inspiring yourself first in order to inspire your students was an important one and one that is often forgotten in our collective rush to do. The myriad of techniques you modeled to help teachers draw out a child's natural creativity were very thought-provoking. The evidence you presented of these techniques through children's own voices was simply remarkable! A deep impression was left on the minds and hearts of the audience."
— Roy Mueller, Director of Education, Kidspace Museum, Pasadena, California

"I really enjoyed the exercises and the concept of helping children to be in the moment."
— Third Grade Teacher

"It was wonderful! Great ideas for classroom management. Inspired me and helped to re-awaken my creativity to connect with the enjoyment of teaching!"
— Second Grade Teacher

"Kia's methods are wonderful! A great encouragement to bring creativity into the classroom—adding music and color to learning!"
— First Grade Teacher

"Kia Portafekas is a teacher and musician who believes that all children can make music if they are given the opportunity and exposed to the variety of styles in which music can be made. Kia did a program for children and parents in which she introduced different ways of listening to rhythm—clapping, using their bodies to keep time to music, making up stories with a rhythmic beat, and even encouraging the children to use the piano by, for example, playing notes that reflect the motion of an animal. . . . Everyone had a great time and came away with the feeling that they really were musicians, even though they were convinced, at first, that they weren't."
— Jan Lieberman, Librarian II, Santa Clara City Library, California

"Thank you, Kia, for a terrific workshop! You are a dynamic speaker who inspired us greatly with your methods.The foster grandparents and myself were very impressed with your presentation and your book! We felt inspired and were amazed how you make teaching look easy and fun! You certainly succeeded in helping to awaken our teachers' 'new found' skills and giving them confidence in themselves."
— Julia Jacobsen, Foster Grandparent Program, Cooperative Educational Service Agency

"Kia is a superior teacher and communicator of her art form. As I observed Kia leading a workshop for teachers and children, I found that her strength is her respect for their experience as professionals. She values 100% of what they bring to the table. She is able to affirm the positive aspects of her workshop participants' own approaches to teaching music, and at the same time build an openness for the participants to explore other methods and approaches to teaching music. She is able to incorporate this spontaneity of bringing in people's experience in an organized and structured format. This combination of preparedness, professionalism, respect, and openess to others makes Kia extremely effective at working with teachers and children."
— Elizabeth Macdonald, Director of The Thunderbird Writing Program, The Garvin School of International Management

"Kia is a wonderful, 'inspiring' presenter who can mystify, challenge, and give you keys to unlock your creativity and your student's creativity. Her workshops are a help to any educator, anywhere who has ever had a student create something of their own."
— Regina Nixon, Executive Director, The Phoenix Conservatory of Music

"Kia's workshop . . . offers a different approach to 'calling the muse within'. I would recommend it to others in my field."
— Renee Saxon, PCM Faculty and Private Lesson Teacher

"Kia's workshop made me a better communicator and listener."
— Michael Mendel, Private Guitar Instructor

"Kia's workshop brought to use . . . the concepts of inspiration, breathing, composing melody along with harmony, listening and following your feelings. I would definitely implement some of these great ideas in my classroom setting."
— Mariza Villegas, Primary Educator and Community Music Facilitator and Educator