Medallion Art school is a true Community Gem to be cherished, respected and shared with others…read more This charming building sits at the near the Heart of Vancouver, right off of Mill Plain Blvd in a central location. Medallion is a small-business with Wonderful owners! You can feel the welcoming ambiance and "good vibes" permeate through the entire building! They offer independent art classes for *all ages*, and there is never any pressure or anxiety because Medallion provides a safe space to create art at your own pace. I highly recommend checking them out if you or your kiddo is interested in pursuing any type of creative flow, because Medallion would be the best choice of place to go. My daughter has been attending for a full year, and loves it! It is a place of independent growth where creativity blooms, and I love to see it especially with our own kiddos. Check out Medallion Art School, and they will do an excellent job of meeting your expectations.

My daughter has been attending Medallion for about 2 years now. The progress she has made mot only…read moreartistically but developmentally is superb. It's a great place for her to relax, focus and gain confidence.. All while making fantastic art that I couldn't be happier to frame! The teachers are wonderful, patient, kind and just great at teaching. And Bob, the owner, has to be one of the sweetest people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing. Always smiling and friendly. Love love love this place!

Best cafeteria lunch in town. Cheaper than Taco Bell. Be sure and try the chicken tenders. Very…read morefashion forward. Replete with great teachers and staff. Would learn again.

two meny blue hair and pronunes. mid restraunt the boritos tasts like if they were dippers and a…read morekid shat in it. chairs are veary kinky they pool out hair. all the teachers are mid and dog water, stinky poopo. the 6th graders smell like wet beaf.ther is no a pluis. :(((((((((((((((

I took classes with three different instructors. Sandra and Jaci were great! Do not take any…read moreclasses with Sherry Nelson. She is a horrible instructor that mocks students and gossips about the staff and owner.

No adult-only classes. Adults are thrown in with children, teens, families. Class isn't really a…read moreclass. There are people doing either watercolor or pencil or graphite or pastels or oils -- all in the same class. So each person picks out a subject to draw or paint, then the teacher walks around trying to help each student. It's too bad, because there are lots of older adults in the Salmon Creek area who are having to drive downtown to take art classes so they can be with other older adults and a teacher who teaches. Also agree with other review that it is very disorganized. Very hard to find out when and what their classes are, and the quality of the teachers, mostly very young 20s, varies widely. I had one teacher who would just sigh heavily and shake her head when she would look at my painting, but offer no help other than that I needed to buy some expensive oil paint when I was trying to learn in acrylic paints that I'd already spent money on. Plus there's no phone number listed for the Salmon Creek school, only the personal cell number of the business owner at the south location, who won't give out any information about classes until you give him all your personal information and then says he'll have someone from Salmon Creek call you back. Horrible way to do business. I think they're not interested in adults, only in getting more children in.

My 5 year old son is in Kindergarten (Kalama) at the Gardner School and absolutely loves it. He has…read moreattended Gardner since the 3 year old preschool, Tum Tum. A few brief facts about Gardner School: preschool through 8th grade, maximum student capacity of 120, 5 bucolic acres with view of Mt St Helens and a wetlands, integrated curriculum (more on this later), explicit inter-grade interactions. The philosophy of the school is that children have 8 distinct intelligences: Verbal/linguistic, math/logic, spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist. Acknowledging that each child has each of these in varying degrees, they teach material through each of these lenses to ensure that each student has the opportunity to learn and excel in a manner best suited to them. Part of this involves teaching subjects that have virtually disappeared from public education: art, music, physical education. Reinforcing the idea that people are at different levels and learn in different ways and speeds are the mixed-age classrooms. The classrooms combine 1st grade with 2nd grade, 3rd with 4th, 5th with 6th, and 7th with 8th. An interesting side-effect of all this is that the students learn empathy. In addition to the integrated curriculum, the school has thematic studies that apply across the entire school, a great example is when the school was studying birds. The preschoolers each picked a kind of bird to be, crafted a costume, and talked about how their bird is adapted to the environment ( my son: "I'm a heron, and with my long beak I eat fish and frogs." ). This was immediately after performing The Hungry Caterpillar in Spanish. Another classroom painted watercolors of local birds that they had seen through their romps in the wetlands. My mother, who is a retired elementary art teacher, was blown away at the high level skill of all of the images, and then utterly floored when it was pointed out that they were done by 1st and 2nd graders. The 3rd and 4th graders wrote and performed a series of shadow puppet plays about how certain birds interacted with their various ecosystems. Another example of the integrated curriculum is the art projects of cell structures done by one of the classrooms--science isn't limited to just the science class and art isn't limited to just the art class. Our son has found the inter-class interactions to be very enriching. These interactions are both explicit and ad-hoc. The classes are assigned buddies in other classes. The Kindergarteners (Kalama) are paired with a 7th or 8th grader (Tahoma) and the 4 year old preschool children (Mazama) are paired with a 3rd or 4th graders (Wy'East). At various times throughout the term, they'll have special buddy activities. Additionally there's a fair amount of unstructured time for the students to interact together either in the form of Open Choice (where the students have options of what they'll do for the day and decide themselves which to do) and After Care. The end result is that 1) my son is obsessed with playing soccer (mostly with the older children insisting on being goalie and that the older kids "shoot on him"), 2) he learned to play chess, and 3) he's really into sea creatures like sharks, whales and squids. Another interesting side-effect is that it seems to much more rapidly increase the children's vocabulary (my 5 year old came home yesterday talking about "topographic maps") and comfort interacting with children younger and older and adults. Our son's class cohort is filled with great children and wonderful, genuine parents. We've become good friends with several, and our son during the first day of a long weekend trip said, "I miss J*** [another student] already." It isn't all rainbows and unicorns though. Like Portland in general, Gardner skews fairly white, but (anecdotally--I don't have any hard numbers) Gardner is seems a bit more diverse than the ambient population. Gardner can also be a significant time and financial commitment. While preschool tuition is extremely competitively with many other programs throughout the greater Portland metro, each family is expected to participate in the school and volunteer helping with events and around the school. From Kindergarten on, tuition is a bit higher, but still quite competitive with other area independent schools. Also, for us, driving from Camas to Salmon Creek everyday can be a bit of a grind, which is somewhat alleviated by carpooling and Waze. No place is perfect though, and, for us, Gardner School is the optimal fit for our needs and values.

Run as fast as you can from Gardner Arts and Science School. Your child deserves better…read more As a concerned parent, I need to warn families about Gardner Arts and Science School's serious problems, problems rooted in the current head of school's complete lack of leadership. She is indecisive, dismissive, and out of touch, leaving teachers to create their own curriculum without any real standards. Most students test below state levels, and many need tutors just to keep up. This is unacceptable for the most expensive private school in the area. Families are leaving in droves, even mid-year, because the instability and poor leadership put their children's education and emotional health at risk. This chaos echoes the split five years ago when half the board and many teachers left to start Lupine. The school board is ineffective, and parents have no real support. If you care about your child's future, don't send them here. The head of school's incompetence is driving this school into the ground.

What a fun & informative class!! Shelby was an excellent, patient & clear instructor, and we walked…read moreout with three beautiful rings (well, and an additional purchase of one of *her* pieces!) to proudly say we made ourselves! It's a shame this space is closing, as it's quite charming & welcoming, and I can see the allure of returning time & time again. There were several members of the class you could tell were returning customers, and Shelby & the other owners (I assume) were so kind & accommodating to them, going so far as to bring orders to the shop during the class for convenience. The good news is that it sounds like the plan is to possibly turn into a monthly subscription/paint at home and/or mobile class service, which means you could gather your friends and make an evening of it, which would be great for us introverts who need to recharge after people-ing!

From the owner: Craft Collective offers a warm, welcoming space for crafters of all skill levels to explore their…read morecreative side and craft confidently. Join us for a variety of hands-on DIY craft workshops, where you will learn how to create the project of your choice with step-by-step guidance from one of our instructors.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a wide-array of art and price-ranges in this shop. I noticed…read morethey had some lovely ceramic pieces (pitchers, bowls, mugs) for under $50. They also had some very reasonably priced original paintings. This is just the kind of shop you've love to see in downtown Vancouver and the perfect place to visit after you've enjoyed lunch at one of the local resturants nearby.

This Gallery is dusty. Literally. (Some of) The work is decent; however, in my opinion, the display…read moreis tired.