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Giving relevance and substance to other classes

Visual Arts

The hallways are filled with impressionist-style paintings, the bright sunny entrance has three-dimentional architectural renderings carefully hung in straight rows and the art studio is aglow with brightly fired pottery. Pennfield is by nature an artistic school and our visual arts programs are especially strong. When Third Graders study Native Americans in social studies, they make clay coil pots and Kachinas in art class. In Fifth Grade, nature is the inspiration for rubbings, prints, ceramic dishes and jungle collages in the style of Henri Rousseau. Upper School students construct a large ornate Chinese New Year’s parade dragon when studying Chinese customs, and they carefully paint traditional designs on terracotta vases when studying ancient Greece. Weaving social studies, science and math together with art projects gives them far more relevance and substance. These themes and many more provide inspiration for teaching our students the arts of drawing, painting, ceramics, printmaking and sculpture throughout their years at Pennfield.