about
MISSION
Brooklyn Beanstalk is an arts driven company offering Art and Language programs to children .
Brooklyn Beanstalk offers specialized Spanish and French language immersion programs as well as performances and arts programs to children from early childhood to elementary grades.
Brooklyn Beanstalk partners with schools and cultural institutions all across NYC.
Brooklyn Beanstalk is committed to fostering the critical thinking of students by creating a fun, interactive learning environment that promotes development and a long lasting love of languages and the arts.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Brooklyn Beanstalk programs are designed to offer children the most essential components to becoming happy, curious, social and self confident lifelong learners. We believe that when we are feeling secure and happy and directly involved socially with our peers, we are able to learn without fear and therefore integrate challenging information in a very resourceful and creative way, and in turn, develop and articulate tools for our own development and the ones around us.
WHO WE ARE
Beanstalk Team Brooklyn Beanstalk was founded in 2010 by French performing artists, Sophie Amieva and Stephanie Larriere. With backgrounds in theater and dance, respectively, they have been practicing teaching artists in NYC for the past ten years, working with numerous NYC educational and art organizations including NYU before the launching of their immersion program.
As well as the Founding Directors, Beanstalk is made up of a team of highly experienced teachers and educational professionals who are passionate about art and learning and about sharing that passion with children. Our team is all native French and Spanish speakers and they carry the richness of their native cultures with them in their teaching.
History
In 2006, both Sophie and Stephanie were part of the teaching team that founded the much celebrated enrichment program at the International School of Brooklyn. Over four years of intensive programming and teaching, they gained incredible insight into how children integrate and assimilate another language as a natural way of communicating, playing and interacting with their environment. In 2010, as a result of the success of their initial classes they designed the first Brooklyn Beanstalk immersion language program.
Bios of the Founding Directors
Stephanie Larriere, co-founder of Brooklyn Beanstalk, is a professional teaching artist, she has led educational after-school programs and performances in NYC public school and dance residencies in leading Arts-in-Education organizations such as Arts Horizons, CREATE and Wingspan Arts. Stephanie has also taught French language instruction in public schools and has been a private French tutor for children and adults. As a tap dancer, she has been performing and teaching in studios, festivals, dance camps and colleges over NY State for the last decade. A native of France, she has been a resident of NYC for more than a decade and lives in Brooklyn with her wonderful 11 year-old son.
Sophie Amieva, co-founder of Brooklyn Beanstalk was raised in France but grew up speaking French and Spanish, having spent summers in her father’s native country of Spain. Sophie studied visual arts and Art History at the Sorbonne and movement and drama at the Ecole international of Theater of Jacques Lecoq. She has been performing for twenty years as both a classical actor and in the fields of puppetry, mime and bouffon. Sophie teaches methods of bouffons and clown performance to professional actors and undergraduate students at NYU for the past eleven years. Sophie is a graduate of the Community Word Project’s 2006 Teaching Artist training and internship program. She has taught circus arts, drama and movement to kids for over ten year in France and the US. Sophie is the proud mother of two beautiful Brooklyn girls, who are growing up speaking French, Spanish and English.
WHERE TO FIND US
We hold immersion language playgroup programs at our locations in several Brooklyn neighborhoods,
Come to us!
Onsite: including: Prospect Heights, Park Slope, BOCOCA, Clinton Hill and Carroll Gardens.
We provide immersion classes, after-school programs
We come to you!
Offsite:
and workshops in daycare centers, preschools and elementary schools all across Brooklyn.
Current & Past Partners
All of our programs can be shaped to fit into your organization. Some of the organizations and locations where Brooklyn Beanstalk programs have featured include:
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International School of Brooklyn
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Montessori Day School of Brooklyn
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Trilok Preschool
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PS20
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Abundance of God Daycare
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Olive Tree House Group
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PS11
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Union Temple Preschool
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Language and Laughter Studio
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Science, Language and Art International School
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Art & Letters
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PS 133
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Green Ivy Schools, Manhattan
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Grace Church School
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PS 397 Spruce Street School, Manhattan
15.PS 118 Maurice Sendak School
16. Open House nursery school
17. Strong Place for Hope day care
18.The Katmint Learning center
19. The Boerum Hill School for International Studies 20. K497
20. PS107 John W Kimball
21.Tiny Steps day cares