Montessori-informed art classes for elementary-age children. Real technique, real materials, real time to make something, taught by working artists who actually know how to teach kids.
We teach art the Montessori way.
Montessori was developed in the early 1900s by Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori, who built her approach on a simple observation: children learn best with real materials, focused time, and the freedom to make real decisions inside a structure their teacher provides. Applied to art, that means a teacher who chooses the project and introduces the technique, and students who get genuine freedom in how they execute it.
The four principles every Montessori art class follows:
The teacher sets the project; the child makes it their own. Each class focuses on a project the teacher has chosen, a technique to learn, a medium to explore. Within that project, students have real freedom: how to interpret the subject, what choices to make, what to try. Structure and freedom together. That's Montessori.
Real materials, real tools. WTC art students work with the kinds of brushes, pencils, paints, and clay that working artists use, not classroom craft supplies. Children rise to the materials they're given.
Time to focus. Montessori classes give children long enough blocks of time to actually engage with their work, 60 to 90 minutes, depending on the class. A child who's just getting started shouldn't have to stop.
Process before product. What matters is how the child engages: observing, deciding, making mistakes, fixing them. The finished piece is a record of the work, not the goal.
Why the methodology matters. Most kids' art classes are 30-minute craft sessions: same project, same materials, same outcome for everyone. WTC's classes also center on a teacher-led project, but the materials are real, the time is genuine, and the freedom inside the project is meaningful. Montessori-informed art is an education in seeing, deciding, and making, and it produces a different kind of young artist.
Meet our faculty.
Visual Art at WTC is taught by Sara Davilla, a working, exhibiting artist with formal training in Montessori-informed pedagogies. Sara teaches all three weekly classes for the 2025–26 school year while our second art instructor, Kristina Daigle, is on maternity leave.
Sara DaVilla
Kristina Daigle
About tuition.
Serious training costs what it costs, and our teachers are worth what they're paid. Visual Art tuition is $500 a year for our 60-minute Tuesday morning classes, or $800 a year for the 90-minute Thursday evening class. Plus a $100 annual registration fee.
We don't believe cost should decide which children get to make art. WTC offers need-based scholarships and bursaries for families where tuition is the barrier, not the choice. Every serious applicant is considered.
Ready to start?
I know what I want, let's enroll.
I want to try a class first.
I still have questions.
Your child's first art class is free. Come, watch, participate, see if it's a fit.