The elementary art program provides an environment in which students develop the skills and capacity to create, respond and communicate through the unique language of the visual arts. Our art teachers nurture imaginative thinkers and inventive problem-solvers. The Art Department is committed to delivering an educational program that nurtures self-expression and self-exploration and that provides opportunities to experience the ways that art can enrich one’s experience in an increasingly visual world.
The elementary art curriculum is part of a comprehensive K-12 Visual Art curriculum that complements the MA Curriculum Framework for the Visual Arts. Elements and principles of art are taught in a sequential and spiraling curriculum, with progressive intensification and complexity added in successive years. Additional key areas of focus include Processes and Skills; Observation, Illusion, Invention, and Abstraction; and Art History, Appreciation and Connections. Throughout the curriculum, students are taught how to talk and write about art and how to evaluate what they see. At even the youngest of grades, students are encouraged to make connections to their own world, think critically, solve visual problems, work cooperatively and find value in the arts. The curriculum provides flexibility to the teachers, allowing them the freedom to approach lessons in their own way, using the media and subject matter that they feel are most appropriate and engaging for their students. This keeps the material fresh, timely and relevant.
Elementary art teachers make connections to students’ learning in other disciplines, for example through the reinforcement of math concepts such as symmetry, building literacy through visual storytelling, the use of art as an entry point for social studies topics, and the development of the creative problem-solving process necessary for engineering and design.
