YOUTH
EXPERIENCES
at Wicked
Rae's
Most kids' classes have a finished product on the wall before the kid even walks in. A sample. A model. A "this is what yours should look like."
We don't do that. Read to learn more below.
Toddler & Me Sensory Art
(Ages 3 to 7).
$60 per pair (one guardian + one child)
60 minutes
A sensory‑rich, hands‑deep, table‑messy art experience designed for young kids ages 3–7 and the grown‑ups who love them.
This is not a sit‑still class. Kids in this age range learn through movement, touch, sound, color, and full‑body exploration.
Their brains are wiring at a pace they will never repeat again, and that wiring happens through doing - touching, dropping, mixing, smelling, trying it again with the other hand.
Sensory art is one of the most powerful inputs for early development because it engages multiple senses at once and ties them to a single act of making.
What You'll Experience
We set up rotating sensory stations that shift each session. Some days lean tactile (clay, plaster wrap, paper mache). Some days lean color (watercolor, splatter, dye). Some days lean texture or movement.
We don’t announce the materials ahead of time - part of the practice is walking in, noticing what’s available, and responding to it. The splatter room is open too (just without paint balloons for this age).
Why Grown‑Ups Stay
This is not a logistics rule. It’s a developmental one.
Kids this age learn through co‑regulation. They watch your face. They take cues from your breath, your posture, your delight, your frustration. They need you at the table making something too.
You do not have to be good at art.
You just have to do it next to them.
If you say “mine is bad,” they will hear that for the rest of their life. So we ask you to make something too - and let yours be weird.
Open Studio
(Ages 8 to 14).
$50 per child. 2 hours. Drop-off welcome.
This is the sit-down session for kids who are ready to disappear into making something.
Around age 8, the prefrontal cortex starts coming online in a real way. Planning emerges. Self-concept sharpens. Kids start being able to hold an idea in their head, choose materials to express it, sit with the frustration of it not working, and try again.
They start being able to fail on purpose.
That capacity is the foundation of every creative discipline. Engineering. Writing. Coding. Music. Surgery. Art.
The kid who learns at 10 that the first version is supposed to be bad is the adult at 30 who can finish things.
Worksheets test what kids already know. Sports build coordination, teamwork, and physical capacity.
Art is one of the few places where they have to invent the answer from scratch and live with the gap between the version in their head and the version in their hands.
That gap is where everything interesting happens.
In Open Studio we put out the same kind of random supply table. Watercolor, clay, plaster wrap, cardboard, paper mache, balloons for lanterns, whatever showed up that day. We do not announce it.
They walk in, look at the table, and decide. They get the splatter room too, just without the paint balloons (those are for our adult workshops).
Parents can drop off and go. Two hours is a real break for you. It is also developmentally important for them.
Kids this age need a space that is theirs, with adults who are not their parents, where they get to try something without anyone watching too closely.
That is part of the work.
What you pick up at the end might look like nothing. It might look like everything. The brain that did the work is the same either way.
HOW WE WORK WITH YOU.
Here is the part we cannot say loudly enough.
When your kid hands you what they made, please do not say "what is it." Please do not say "we can fix that part." Please do not say "next time try drawing it like this."
Say "tell me about it." Say "I love how you put this part next to that part." Say "I would love to put this on the fridge."
We are not saying this because we are precious about art. We are saying it because the kid handing you that piece is a more confident, more regulated, more focused version of the kid you dropped off. That version is fragile in the first five minutes. A wrong sentence from you can erase the whole hour. A right sentence locks it in.
You are the most important part of whether this stays with them.