Our Jam Pod pre-preschool program provides educational activities led by a skilled teaching artist in your home or at your location of choice.
Both small pod and one-on-one options.
Jam with Jamie’s enrichment program was built to serve families looking for safe options for their young children.
We use a creative, play-based, arts integrated curriculum that is adaptable for home learning or other locations, including parks and play spaces.
For ages 18 months-4 years, the activities are customized for each pod.
Connecting and exploring movement, music, sensory play, arts and crafts together in a safe environment with a skilled and caring teaching artist, is the foundation of our program.
Through play and hands-on educational activities for kids, we explore and learn about ourselves, each other, and the world around us, as well as the infinite possibilities of our imaginations.
Our work is always evolving, based on the needs of each child in every family we work with.
What does a Jam Pod look like on a typical day?
Movement Activity
Stretching, Yoga, Dance, Obstacles, Creative expression
Letter/Word/Question of the Day
Our jumping off point each day to focus and bring our attention to something new that we will integrate into our story, our songs, and our work time
Read Aloud
A daily storybook
Sing-along
It's time for music and rhythm!
Work Time
Sensory exploration, manipulatives, crafts, projects, strengthening fine and gross motor skills
Play!
Indoors, outdoors, imaginative and dramatic play
Created By
Aliya Ellenby
Aliya holds an MA in performance studies and a BA in theater with a concentration in community-based performance and arts-education, both from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. From 2009 to 2013, Aliya lived and worked in Bolivia as an integral member of a collective of independent artists, organizing and participating in international theater and puppetry festivals, creating, performing, writing, and teaching. From 2013 to 2016, she worked as a public middle school language arts teacher in Miami. In 2016, she moved back to Bolivia and became the coordinator of Kids’ Books Bolivia, a bilingual and trilingual children's book project, that has published more than 40 books. She began working for Jam with Jamie at the beginning of 2020 as the Operations Manager.
She continues to advise and consult on multiple arts-integrated curriculum projects in schools and organizations from early childhood through high school and was thrilled to be able to bring all of her experience, creativity and passion to designing the Jam with Jamie Homeschool program. Aliya believes that education is most effective when it "helps a child to open themself to life" (Maria Montessori), and has built the Homeschool program on this belief, creating a structure for a child to thrive, guided by their own spontaneity and creativity. Having watched her own children flourish the most in a safe and loving environment, with infinite possibilities for exploration, imagination, and play, we seek to bring this into your home with our experienced and caring teaching artists, and educational activities for kids which encourage learning and growth.
Jamie Kolnick
Jamie Kolnick is originally from Miami, Florida and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Theater and Dance. She moved to New York City In 2008 for the lights on Broadway and while auditioning for everything under the sun she took all of her experience working as a music teacher in preschools and started her children’s entertainment and education company, Jam with Jamie.
Over the past twelve years, Jamie has created multiple educational curriculums while managing over 50 teaching artists across the country. It is her passion to create and serve the community and children especially during this critical time.
Jamie lives on the Upper West Side of NYC with her husband Shaun and her two rambunctious boys who have been her best teachers to date, Zach, 4 years old and Evan, 2 years old.
