Jay Mankita’s great family concert – ready for the 2026 Summer Reading theme “Plant a Seed, Read.”
Fun, interactive, and often danceable songs, planting musical seeds to help kids grow their love of the earth, each other, and themselves.
Songs of ecology, sustainability, kindness, and hope; songs about healthy food, cooperative play, even aliens, and accountants, music, and of course, the value of reading!
With Playful Engineers entering it’s 10th year, some folks still remember that Jay was a touring performer, long before his evolution into a maker space-based teaching artist. This year’s reading theme, “Plant a Seed, Read” feels like the perfect time for him to grab the guitar and get back to it!
These songs highlight our connections to the earth, and to each other – how we live, and what we grow and eat shapes us, and the world around us. Kids leave with songs in their heads and hearts, and maybe with more of a sense that we are all part of something much bigger — the living systems that sustain and surround us.
Including songs from Jay’s Eat Like A Rainbow album
Eat Like A Rainbow is a family concert — musical, joyful, and full of singing and dancing kids. Based on Jay Mankita’s beloved Parents’ Choice Award-winning children’s album, this musical program brings kids and families together to celebrate farms and gardens, healthy food, sustainability, and community.
Great for small or large groups, indoor or outside – we travel with an excellent sound system – just leave room to get up and dance!
Playful Engineers programs help kids understand systems — complex wholes made from simple parts, cause and effect, scale, and cycles — what we experience in our day-to-day world. Our hands-on programs like Chain Reactions or Artful Mechanisms focus on machines and kinetic art, while our concert programs are all about how we ourselves fit into the natural world.