Lower School Fine Arts
- Students in Kindergarten through fifth grade participate in drama and music performances.
- Music classes follow the Kodaly based method with Orff and Suzuki. Twice per week, grades first through fifth participate in music class.
- Art and Music have a coordinated curricula on a five year cycle, running from the medieval era through the twentieth century.
Highlights from our 2011 Lower School Fine Arts Programs
Lower School Renaissance
Our elementary artists are learning all about the Renaissance this semester. They are focusing on Leonardo da Vinci’s incredible life as a painter, inventor, musician and architect. The students have examined his works, including The Last Supper, Madonna of the Rocks and Mona Lisa. They also learned that the only one of his paintings that resides in the United States is Ginevra de ‘Benci, which is housed in Washington, D.C.
Upcoming art topics for the Lower School will include clay sculpture art projects and a study on Michelangelo. “Among other lessons from him, they will learn that you don’t tell your boss, ‘I don’t do ceilings and why,’” joked art teacher Mary Donnan Heppert. She continued, “Our young artists will be drawing on paper attached to the bottom of the tables, while sitting on the floor underneath them.” Miss Heppert wants to remind her pupils how much fun Michelangelo had working on the Sistine Chapel ceiling for four years. Click here to see photos (submitted by Ms. Heppert) of her art students in action.
Fourth & Fifth Grade Spring Musical
On May 19, our fourth- and fifth-grade students presented the musical, “RATS!” The students took spectators to the town of Hamelin. It was being overrun with rats and the citizens were in a tizzy… until the mysterious Pied Piper appeared, offering to solve their dilemma for a small fee. The script is based on the legend of the “Pied Piper of Hamelin.”
The characters were charming, the dialog was witty and the songs were clever and fun to sing! In order to prepare the younger students to understand the performace, Mrs. Lawson read the story of the Pied Piper to each Lower School class.
