Art

Joyfully drawing forth the artist in every student.The Lower School Art curriculum fosters individual expression and creative thinking in young artists, challenging them to observe carefully and examine critically, to solve problems and develop new questions, to elaborate and collaborate. With increasing sophistication, Lower School students explore various ways to communicate their ideas visually including drawing, painting, printmaking, weaving, and making sculptures and collages.

Key Characteristics

• Students create with a wide variety of artistic media so that every child can be a successful artist.  Individual voice, problem-solving skills, creative thinking and art in the world around us are major themes.

• The Lower School Art program fosters habits of mind that help children integrate their new knowledge, grow as independent learners, and gain confidence as artists. The curriculum builds art vocabulary and skills, stimulates creativity, and strengthens problem-solving practices.

Curricular Highlights

Woodshop. In our woodshop curriculum, our youngest students learn shop safety, simple assemblage techniques and how to use straight saws, vices, rulers, speed squares and files. Coping saws are added to our students' tool boxes so that they can explore more complex challenges and create advanced works of art.

Clay studio. Our youngest artists make textures in clay and create free-standing sculptures. Building on their knowledge, students in grades three through five employ more complicated hand building techniques to create tiles, coil pots, and clay cylinders.

Community Connections. We partner with the Woodmere Art Museum, which features our student work in their children’s gallery. Second grade students participate in Woodmere’s Kids Care service project and their Artist's at Work program, where they meet professional artists in residence at the museum.

Art In Our Lives unit. Our oldest artists' work focuses on their unique role in our community and the causes that are most dear to them. In conjunction with a classroom emphasis on social justice, fifth graders take a trip to PAFA to learn about artists who use their work to make a difference in the world.

All-School Art Show. Every year, Lower School students showcase their work in an on-campus gallery exhibition open to Penn Charter artists of all ages.