Playlab - A nurturing place for creative exploration

Jen Sunderland, Playlab Founder

Jennifer Sunderland is a teaching artist with over 30 years of experience working in varied classroom settings with young children, as well as art enrichment classes with children up to 12 years of age. Over those years, she has had the opportunity to teach in programs with differing curriculums and approaches, such as non-biased Bank Street inspired, Montessori influenced, and she even spent a few years working closely with teachers who trained abroad in an authentic Reggio Emilia classroom.

While working as a team teacher at the Early Childhood Development Lab on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, she had the opportunity to enroll in classes to learn more about child development and child psychology. These three years of courses were the perfect compliment to all she had learned after several years working in the field and completing her Child Development Associate certification.

Since the founding of Playlab in 2012, Jennifer has continued to build on her years of experience and prides herself on creating a progressive and nurturing community for young children and their families.

Manuela Viera Gallo, Team Teacher

Manuela Viera Gallo is a wonderful educator and accomplished artist who works in many formats. She loves sharing the learning experience with students through playing and exploring together with a vast array of materials to approach different concepts. After completing her Masters in Fine Arts at Universidad Catolica in Chile in 2001, she created a series of sculptural installation projects as workshops with school-aged children of all ages. After moving to New York in 2008 she began working in the preschool setting as the teaching artist in a bilingual Spanish/English program in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2017, after creating and running Gincana (an art-based summer camp for 4-10 year olds) for several years, Manuela joined the Playlab team.

As a Chilean, Manuela is dedicated to Spanish being an integral part of her teaching. Through her wonderful ability to weave the language into her interactions with the children she is working with, Spanish is introduced in a way that is playful, organic, and wholistic. She supports the established fluency with Spanish-speaking children while introducing non-Spanish speakers to the spoken language through stories, songs, and daily activities.