Students learn to express personal ideas and feelings using their imagination, memory, and observation. They learn to value originality, artistic freedom, and the art process. The curriculum places art making at the center, and aesthetics, art criticism and history grow out of and serve students’ creative experiences. With opportunities to make choices, students cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, as they exercise judgment in solving their own artistic problems. Through the making of their own art, students learn to invent, experiment, take risks, make mistakes, and learn from each other.

The Visual Arts program integrates six curriculum strands including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture/ceramics, crafts and photography. Students in kindergarten through fifth-grades receive approximately 50 minutes of visual art instruction every two weeks.