Art

In kindergarten and first grade, students continue to build confidence with materials while expanding their understanding of visual language and design. Classes often begin with a book that connects to the day’s exploration, helping students connect reading, observation, and making.

Students work with a broad range of media—drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, fiber, clay, and more—while exploring foundational ideas such as line, shape, color, pattern, and composition. Their work is inspired by nature, seasonal change, stories, and the work of artists and illustrators from many traditions and cultures.

Alongside skill-building, students learn to slow down, observe carefully, and trust their ideas. They begin to see themselves as artists capable of making thoughtful and expressive work, both individually and together as a community.

Second grade artists deepen their engagement with materials and ideas while continuing to expand technical skills and creative vocabulary. Each class is rooted in inquiry, often beginning with a book or shared reference that opens into exploration and making.

Students work in drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, weaving, and clay, while also exploring themes such as nature, color theory, and observational drawing. Artistic study includes looking at a range of artists and movements—including abstract, surrealist, pop, and expressionist traditions—to expand how students see and interpret visual work.

Projects often connect to lived experience and scientific observation, such as life cycles and seasonal change. Through sustained making and reflection, students build confidence, care for detail, and begin to understand how artists communicate ideas and emotions.

In third and fourth grade, students increasingly develop their own artistic voice while continuing to build technical fluency. They are encouraged to take risks, try new approaches, and begin shaping personal aesthetic choices.

Students work across a wide range of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking, fiber arts, sewing, collage, mixed media, and sculpture. Projects may include both independent and collaborative work, helping students understand how art can function both personally and within community.

Their work is inspired by identity, imagination, observation, art history, and the natural world. Students study a range of artists and movements while also responding to shared studio experiences and themes. Reflection and critique become more intentional as students learn to describe choices, processes, and meaning in their work.

In the upper grades, students take on greater responsibility for shaping their artistic process. They make more independent decisions about media, scale, and concept, and are encouraged to develop and refine a personal artistic voice.

Students work in drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, fiber arts, clay, and mixed media, often combining techniques to support more complex ideas. Projects increasingly emphasize intention, revision, and synthesis, as students consider both form and meaning in their work.

Themes may include identity, anatomy, abstraction, symbolism, and art made for others, alongside continued exploration of observation and imagination. Students engage with a range of artistic traditions and movements while building their own ways of seeing and making.