About Renee Padgett:

Renee Padgett has spent more than three decades learning alongside young children. She began her career in 1994 as a preschool paraprofessional, where she was introduced to the Bank Street approach and the idea that children should be supported along their own individual developmental paths. That early experience shaped the way she would teach, create, and perform for years to come.

Renee’s path to children’s music was not a traditional one. While working in classrooms, she also studied acting, improvisation, and comedy, performed in independent theater, sang in bands, and worked with a traveling children’s theater company. After returning to school to study early childhood development, she became especially interested in the relationship between brain development, physical development, movement, and learning.

In 2005, Renee brought those parts of her life together and created Renee’s Here!, an early childhood music program rooted in movement. Her first original songs were written around directional language, large-muscle development, participation, and the ways young children naturally use their bodies to understand the world. What began as a small preschool music program grew through word of mouth into classes, performances, teacher workshops, three albums, and an original collection of characters, stories, and songs.

Renee brings to her workshops the perspective of someone who has been a classroom teacher, performer, songwriter, parent, and working children’s musician.

Children learn best when they’re having fun!