Introducing The Classical Workshop!
Hello, and welcome to our blog! This will be a place for us to announce events, new releases, and post educational articles about classics for kids. For our first entry, we thought we’d talk about who we are and how the company came to be.
The idea for the company came from a class on Greek lyric poetry I took during graduate school. The class studied a fragmentary poem by a fellow named Alcman who lived around the 7th century BCE-or about 2600 years ago. My wife and I were planning for our first child at the time, so I was already surrounded by board books and could recognize that the poem would make a great book for a little one. I thought then that it would be tremendous fun to start a company that designed and produced educational books and games for children that were based on classical literature and art. I can’t say that I ever expected that to happen, until it did!
Several years after that class, I finished my Ph.D. by writing my dissertation at night and taking care of the kids (we ended up with two) during the day. As children’s books and toys piled up around us, and my own kids developed their own interest in antiquity, I really came to believe that every child’s basic love for learning, history, and art could be encouraged by introducing them to classical humanities as early as possible. Thus, The Classical Workshop was born.
Our values are simple, and inspired by my own love for children, education, and the classics. All of our books and games are carefully designed with education in mind. They are created by real scholars and are consistently accurate and true to the literature and art that inspired them. We also believe in the power of art, both ancient and modern, to inspire young minds. That’s why we only work with real artists and never use AI to create our products. Finally, we proudly manufacture every one of our products right here in the United States. Our current manufacturing partners, The Portland Puzzle Company and Pint Size Books, do tremendous work and help build real American communities every day. We’re very pleased that they have partnered with us to help us do the same.
We hope that you’ll join us on our journey to bring the classics to a new generation of young scholars. In the meantime, be well-or, as the Romans would say, valete!
