Artenia Beast's Academy of Play and Whimsy is a school for creators, inventors, and havers of grand ideas. We claim friendship and indulge in wonder.
Opened inOctober 2014, Artenia Beast’s Academy of Play and Whimsy is dedicated to the schooling of the young creator, inventor, and haver of grand ideas. Beginning with two year olds who have honed the essential adventuring skills of walking with confidence and greeting others with tremendous joy, Artenia Beast’s Academy nurtures young world explorers in the essential skills of embracing the possi
bilities of life. Children between 2 and 5 years old spend their days immersed in play, adventure, and community. Whether studying the properties of the basic elements in the science lab, deepening their connection to the color blue in our artist studio, or trekking across wild landscapes in the outdoor play space, the children ever strengthening their spirits, voices, and bodies. We nurture each child’s inheritance of adventure and passion. We share the work of nose wiping. We hug, laugh, and sing songs. We listen to magical stories and tell them. We extend each day as an offering of space, moments, and support so that each child might make of it what they will. Artenia Beast offers full and part time care for children 2-5 year olds. Our Credo
Play and playfulness are the heart of learning in early childhood. Children learn best through loving, authentic relationships. We do away with shy, bossy, naughty, tomboy and labels that confine who a child is becoming. We believe the label girl or boy tells us nothing about the play a child desires or the possibilities they hold. Fill a child’s day with moments to build, play and discover and you will not be able to hold her or him back from reading, science, and life-long learning. We believe teacher is guide, researcher, nurturer, and playful partner. Children need space and time to hear the whisperings of wonder and to follow where curiosity leads. Nature should come in large doses and daily. Who is Artenia Beast? Born to a rather dull family that ran an accounting dynasty in Plodding, Ohio, Artenia Beast developed her own passion for adventuring at the tender age of three when she breached the milk door of the family home and discovered the thrill of wandering, scaling walls, and hand carving flutes from river reeds. Returning home that night with a missing tooth never clearly explained, Artenia devoted the remaining days of her childhood to claiming experience and fraying her parents’ rather delicate nerves. After four decades of world wandering, Artenia’s mind turned back to the days of childhood with the realization that there was no shortage of dull adults ever weighing down the planet. Determined to do her bit to change this trend, Artenia envisioned an Academy of Play and Whimsy where each child’s inheritance of adventure and passion was properly nurtured. Touring modern schools, she quickly diagnosed an obsession with the alphabet and the creation of lines of children- a condition that had resulted in a complete disregard of such essential life skills as fording swift streams and capturing the hues of a sunset on canvas. Artenia Beast ensures each child's day offers endless opportunity for exploration. She also develops essential life skills such as proper response to encounters of wild bears, the raising of tents, and the fundamentals of catapult construction. Artenia Beast's Academy of Play and Whimsy will be located at 5265 H Street, Sacramento. We lease our space from The Table, a progressive Methodist congregation. Our school began with two large classrooms opened in October 2014. We will expand to 4 classroom serving 40 children in the year ahead. The outdoor play space will also be greatly expanded and in the months ahead will transform into a magical space where children explore, create, and grow close to the natural world. Artenia Beast will be directed by the same creative team behind Art Beast Children's Studio in midtown Sacramento. Artenia Beast will of course be advising our efforts from far flung corners of adventure and mischief. We will be offering full and part time care for children between 2 and 5 years old. Artenia Beast's Academy of Play and Whimsy is a licensed child development center operating under license 343620093
05/02/2025
Grateful to our Artenia families who have reached out in love and support for Waking the Village on the Big Day of Giving! You are ensuring we keep our 7 houses, 16 apartments, 3 preschools, and big, joyful drop-in center thriving in the year ahead as we stand by children and youth overcoming homelessness. 🥰
Long before launching Artenia Beast, in 1999, Blithe co-founded Waking the Village, kicking it off with this bike trip across America with youth 11 to 20 years old. In addition to being an era of pay phones and paper maps and VHS tapes that barely survived the decades, it was also the last year of the millennium and it truly felt like we were on the cusp of a new era where social justice would send its roots deeper. The riders on the trip came from such different backgrounds and neighborhoods and beliefs, but 65 days and 2300 miles later, we had worked through it all and been reshaped into a true community.
Today, Waking the Village finds itself needing its community more than ever as we continue the work of housing, supporting, and believing in youth and children overcoming homelessness. We hope our Artenia family can be among those helping us increase support and protection this year. How?
1. Support the work. Giving links are in the comments.
2. Help us share our work. One easy way is to follow Waking the Village's social media pages and like and share our posts. They are heavily suppressed by the algorithm and you can help us escape that. Links in the comments.
3. Encourage a few people you know to give in support. We are hoping to have 300 individual donors support us this Big Day of Giving. We would love help and network sharing with this as the direct service impacts us more heavily than ever in these times.
4. Use your platforms to share the beautiful truth that intervention works. 95% of the youth we serve escape homelessness in the long term. Ending youth homelessness is key to ending adult homelessness. Learn more about our programs at www.wakingthevillage.org
5. Come out May 1st to the Children's Talent Show- the sweetest of Open Mics- where artists 2 to 12 can share song, jokes, dances, poems, karate kicks, magic tricks, and anything that brings them joy. Flyer in the comments.
Grateful for our Artenia community! ❤️🩷🧡💛💚🩵💜 https://youtu.be/jztghpGKlms?feature=shared
Waking the Village 1999 Bike Trip Across America
In 1999, Waking the Village launched with a bike trip across America. Seventeen youth, ages 11 to 21, rode from California to Florida, offering a good deed i...
05/02/2024
Take a glimpse inside our village, as our youth share what it means to join Tubman House and our community of youth and children. ❤️🏠
Tubman House
This is "Tubman House" by Waking the Village on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
05/02/2024
Grateful to all the Artenia families supporting the wider village of families on this Big Day of Giving! ❤️ Donation links in the comments.
There are so many big days in our village. Births and graduations and first apartments and first jobs. Passing the driving test, making your baby's first birthday cake, saving your first thousand dollars, saving your second. On this Big Day of Giving, YOU join our village of believers that stand behind each youth and child as they journey away from homelessness. ❤ Donation links in the comments.
05/01/2024
Big Day of Giving is almost here. Your support ensures that the hundreds of youth and children Waking the Village serves each year escape homelessness and claim all the joy and possibilities of home and family. ❤️ Early giving is open (links in the comments).
Today was a Key Day. One of our youth had apartment keys dropped into their palm. Tonight they will sleep in their own place for the first time, a bit confounded by the quiet that is not unlike the quiet at the top of a mountain after a long, hard climb. Behind these moments are months of work. Youth work alongside our team and live in our community as they establish income, save, start jobs, continue school, raise babies, build connections, fill out so many applications, and endure far too many rejections from landlords simply for being young.
Each time, our team shares a photo of this moment- the keys glinting in a palm, a youth grinning in an empty living room, a toddler turning that door k**b. We all exclaim and rejoice and 🥳. Key Day is what gets us through the too many hard days in this work.
Tomorrow is a day to give to our village to ensure the 56 families we are housing right now and the hundreds of youth and children we will serve this year will get their Key Day. We will turn your donations into diapers and furniture and homes- and staff to stand shoulder to shoulder with our youth and children through it all.
Giving is open now. Donation links are in the comments. Grateful to all who are part of our village of support. ❤
Look at those smiles! The children of Tubman House fill our days with constant joy. Also bringing us joy? The Artenia Beast families reaching out on this Big Day of Giving to ensure every child has a home, a beautiful school, and a community that loves them wildly.
Big day! We just crossed $15,000 raised and look at those smiles. One of the perks of working for Waking the Village is we get VERY good at making baby faces. Come join the giving and smile making!
The Big Day of Giving is here! Wild gratitude to all our Artenia Beast families who have supported the families of Waking the Village today. Donate now to double your impact with matching funds. https://www.bigdayofgiving.org/donate/wakingthevillage
Big Day of Giving has arrived! Join us in supporting first steps, first days, first jobs, and the joy of first experiences. Rise and shine, Village!
The Big Day of Giving is here! We hope your family will support Waking the Village as we provide housing, wellness support, childcare, education, and employment support to young parents, youth, and children as they overcome homelessness. Homelessness is a crises of disconnection. Giving today is one way to begin the work of bring every youth and every child into the love of community.
What does family mean to you? To us, it means showing up. Showing up when we are tired. Showing up when we are frustrated. Showing up in quiet ways. Showing up in loud ways. It means showing up on hard days, hard months, and hard years. We know that for all of us, it has been a long and difficult past couple of years and through it all, we have SEEN our Village show up time and time and time again.
TOMORROW is the Big Day of Giving. We know it’s a lot to ask, but whether it is your first time donating or whether you have been a long time supporter of Waking the Village, we are asking you to show up once again. You can show up by donating $10. You can show up by creating your own fundraiser. You can show up by sharing our page. All we ask is that you try. Any donation, no matter how small, makes a massive difference in the lives of youth and young adults experiencing homelessness in Sacramento.
Tomorrow, we ask that you do all you can to show up for our Village. We see you, we appreciate you, and we love you. Every dollar raised during the Big Day of Giving goes to ensure the children and youth of Waking the Village are housed and supported in every way as they chase big dreams and lasting stability.
The Big Day of Giving is this Thursday and early giving it open! We hope our Artenia Beast community will support Waking the Village and the children and youth offered housing, support, and love each day for the last 19 years. Each year, Big DOG donations ensure Waking the Village the freedom to dream and grow outside the boundaries of its funding streams. The donations let us restore what is broken down. They let us launch preschools like Art Beast and Muck and Wonder! They let us serve a youth a few months past the age cut off of the funding. They let us take our youth and children to the sea and the snow. They let Waking the Village THRIVE as an agency. Please consider supporting children and youth experiencing homelessness with this critical funding.
You can give at WTV's Big DOG page: https://www.bigdayofgiving.org/organization/wakingthevillage
OR WTV's Facebook fundraiser (no admin fees taken!): https://www.facebook.com/donate/521579976165065/
OR Venmo (no admin fees taken):
OR Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?cmd=_s-xclick...
05/07/2021
Waking the Village is feeling your love! We are so close to reaching our match. Double your donation by giving before midnight. Want to hear a bit more about what your love gives? Here's Grace, our Creation District Director:
If you somehow know me and don't know all about Waking the Village and the Creation District and the shelter crisis in Sacramento (I'm confused about what we've ever talked about) but, you can read all the juicy details in our website. Here is how I would describe the work in a few moments you won't find in website print:
The first time watching a little one touch snow, or a flower, or stand up straight on this planet. The time we all cried when we finally got to the ocean, wearing burger crowns, feeling like royalty. The day we put the beds together. And un-put them together. And put them back together again. The night we threw water balloons at each other because we were frustrated. The morning we watched the sky open up together because we were hopeful. The day we changed a diaper in the middle of a corn maze by the light of glow sticks. The long nights in delivery rooms. The daily miracles happening over and over and over again. The time we felt like rockstars and nobody could take that away from us. The time we turned a van into a playground because we couldn't give up. The time we cut down a Christmas tree and it fell off the roof of the car. The day we climbed a volcano in Mexico and knew after that, anything was possible. The days when we were really really really impossibly mad at each other and things would never be the same ever ever again. The next day when we forgot why and kept going anyway. The times when we pressed on. The days when we kept moving. The baby showers. The birthday parties. The graduations. The clogged toilets. The broken screen doors. The Christmas breakfasts with Santa. (The humiliation time when I was Santa). The egg hunts. The trick-or-treating. The DHA visits. The math homework. The first steps. The impossible nights. The family dinners. The first house keys. The joy. The ache. The forgiveness. The hope. The life. The sweet, sweet, precious life ❤ https://www.bigdayofgiving.org/wakingthevillage
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