Prime Arts

The Sage School Arts Department is committed to nurturing each child's participation in the creative process, in its many forms. Completion, performance and evaluation are important outcomes, but should always be outgrowths of individual journeys, representing what came before. The cultivation of personal ownership and the independent ability to engage in artistic adventure should lead to a life-long sense of joy and kinship with creative activity of all kinds. The Sage School Arts Department considers the arts of all description to be fundamental subject areas and essential to the building of a balanced and integrated personality. Participation leads to insight into the human potential for personal expression, social/historical commentary and the full appreciation of individual and diverse identities of self and other within community. Simply stated: lovingly supported participation in the arts allows each child to sense, practice, define and celebrate their own unique position in the world.

Visual Arts

Philosophy

The Prime Division art curriculum is focused on the nurturance of creative activity as experienced through the visual arts. Children in the Prime age group have a natural and spontaneous momentum, which finds delight in the manipulation of materials to produce a unique record of the experience. Every facet of the art class constitutes a "teachable moment." It is during the Prime years that students develop the expectations, foundations and habits of mind and practice that will set a healthy tone for all future years of arts studies. At The Sage School students are encouraged to draw upon their creative capacity in many ways, throughout all subjects and levels. In the art class, they are able to revel in "art for art's sake" first and foremost, and then to extend and apply this accomplishment in its many manifestations: self expression, cultural awareness, context of community, art appreciation and interdisciplinary connection.

Content

Drawing

• Use of diverse media: graphite, colored pencil, marker, oil pastel, pastel
• Variety of subject: Still life, posed figure, landscape, photograph, remembered event
• Formal elements: sketch, line, blending, creating texture, detail

Painting

• Use of diverse media: fingerpaint, watercolor, tempera
• Technique: Choice and care of brush, brushstroke, mixing colors, contrast of line and area, use of water.
• Formal elements: Use of space, use of color, use of texture and shape.

Design

• Organizing use of space: composition, symmetry, structure, overlapping, positive and negative space, working the whole page
• Creating and using patterns, repetition and variation
• Recognizing and using elements in combination: shape, line, color
• Planning a project and executing steps

Three-dimensional experience

• Use of diverse media: Polymer clay, foam, wire, papier mache, paper sculpture, textural relief, assemblage
• Technique: exploring and planning around the possibilities of the medium, safe use of tools and appropriate procedures
• Considering the object in space: viewing from all sides, creating stability/display, function.

Sample projects

Drawing
Students are asked to walk around a tree, observing it's shape, growth pattern, texture, shape of leaves, details such a cobweb, bird's nest, etc. Following an experimental exploration of the variety of lines possible with a graphite pencil, students draw the tree remembering and representing all of these observations.

Painting
Students are given primary colors of tempera in a mixing tray. They must discover how to create secondary colors such as green. The variety of greens created is used with a variety of brush sizes to create a stripe painting.

Design
Students sit in a circle. "Respectful rules" are established. Each begins a picture with oil pastel by placing a symbol in the center of paper. Passing the paper to the next student, each adds a "ring" of his or her own design around the center, sequentially creating a mandala, or radial design, until the page returns to the "owner." Perceptions about the process and outcome are discussed.

Three Dimensional experience
Students view and study Ndebele geometric design and beaded dolls. Dolls are created by covering bottles with papier mache and appropriate painted designs. Spherical wooden heads are attached and faces painted according to individual design. Arms, necklaces and crowns are created by stringing beads on wire and attaching to the body.

Additional sample projects

• Rubbings: found and intentional texture
• Mixed media: oil and water resist
• Printmaking: monoprint from fingerpaint, raised impression block printing.
• Tissue paper collage: color mixing through translucency.
• Paper sculpture: snow forts, pop-ups, etc.
• Polymer clay: beads

Themes in Prime art classes

• Building upon experimentation
• Relating to and interpreting particular works of art
• Relating to diverse cultures, points of view, folk traditions
• Utilizing relevant interdisciplinary themes in conjunction with Prime Division studies of countries, cultures, nature, etc.
• Ideas from personal experience, communications with family and friends, holidays, gifts, expression of feelings
• Storytelling

Skills

In the Prime Division, students are in the process of developing manual and conceptual skills over the spectrum. In the course of a year, young Prime students will be introduced to a skill that will be practiced through a variety of experiences and with increasing levels of challenge throughout the upper Prime years.

• Use of drawing media: graphite pencil, colored pencil, marker, oil pastel.
• Use of paint: tempera, watercolor. Mixing colors, proper use of brushes, brushstrokes, paint texture tools.
• Use of scissors, glue, rulers, various tools as appropriate.
• Use of 3-D media: polymer clay, paper mache, foam, wire, and assemblage.
• Listening and questioning: attending to demonstrations, explanations and understanding procedures.
• Establishing the process: following steps, experimenting, choosing, revising, signing, appreciating.
• Establishing personal approach: adjusting working time, trying alternatives, facing frustration, identifying preferences.
• Learning and employing safety procedures.
• Working both independently and in collaboration.
• Observing and discussing works of art: content, style, expression, formal elements such as color and shape.
• Learning and applying relevant vocabulary.
• Reflecting on outcomes, appreciating the work of others

Materials

Books

Ames, Jim, Color Theory Made Easy , Watson Guptill Publications, 1996
Bang, Molly, Picture This: perception and composition , Little Brown & Co., 1991
Brommer, Gerald, Collage Techniques , Watson Guptill Publications, 1994
Heyman, Therese, Posters American Style , Harry N. Abrams, 1998
Hogarth, Burne, Dynamic Light and Shade , Watson Guptill Publications, 1990
Jackson, Paul, The Pop-up Book , Henry Holt and Co., 1996
Janson and Janson, History of Art for Young People , Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1997
Kaupelis, Robert, Experimental Drawing , Watson Guptill Publications, 1992
Lozner, Ruth, Scratchboard for Illustration , Watson Guptill Publications, 1990
Marceau, Jo, ed., Art a World History , DK Publishing, Inc., 1997
Peck, Judith, Sculpture as Experience , Chilton Book Co., 1989
Smithsonian, The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch , Walker Art Center, 1996
Sullivan, Terry, The Best of Sketching and Drawing , Rockport Publishers, 1999

Eyewitness Art series, Composition, Introduction to Perspective, The Renaissance, Impressionism, Watercolor, etc.

How Artist See series, Abbeville Publishing Group, 1997

Scholastic Art Magazine

Teacher's Reference

Cubley and Cassou , Life, Paint and Passion , JP Tarcher, 1996
Hurwitz, Al, Gifted and Talented in Art, a Guide to Program Planning , Davis Publications, 1983
London, Peter, No More Secondhand Art: Awakening the Artist Within , Shambala, 1989
Miller, Sarah, From Modern Art to "Degenerate" Art , Harvard University Art Museums, 2002
Piirto, Jane, Understanding Those Who Create , Gifted Psychology Press, 1998
Williams, Linda, Teaching for the Two-Sided Brain, Simon & Schuster, 1983

Videos

art:21 Art in the twentyfirst century , PBS, 2003

Behind the Scenes series: David Hockney: The Illusion of Depth, Carrie May Weems: Framing, Nancy Graves: Balance , WNET

Chuck Close: A portrait in progress , Home Vision Arts, 1998

How to Make Giant Puppets , The Puppeteers' Cooperative

Masters of Illusion , National Gallery of Art, 1991

Van Gogh's Van Goghs , Home Vision Arts, 1999

The Sage School Music Curriculum

Philosophy

The desired outcome of The Sage School music curriculum is to nurture and support children's inherent love and desire to express themselves in sound. The music curriculum aims to support the development of the child's interest in manipulating sound and silence, the two basic elements of music, by creating a learning environment where children experience, study and manipulate the various elements of music.

The Sage School music curriculum aims to incorporate various methodologies to meet the needs of students. The one approach that underlines much of the curriculum is the pedagogical approach developed by Zoltan Kodaly. This sequential, child-centered approach that advocates the use of folk songs and only the highest quality art music drives the music literacy component of the curriculum. The Kodaly Method's aim is for students to have full ownership of their learning. The process that students engage in is one where each experience acts as a foundation for the next. In this three tier approach, each musical element is experienced first, then made conscious to the students, and finally it is practiced. Each of these processes is supported by kinesthetic, aural and visual reinforcement and experiences to meet the needs of learners by presenting material in different modalities.

The music literacy component of The Sage School music curriculum is based on the premise that a child's immersion in music should take the form of aural and kinesthetic experiences prior to the introduction of symbols, reading and writing skills. This process is similar to the one that children engage in as they learn their mother tongue.

The goal of this process is to ensure musical thinking. Its aim is to engage children in a learning process whereby aural learning and understanding of music precedes experiences of connecting sound to notation.

At the central core of The Sage School music curriculum is the commitment to engage children in experiences that offer opportunitities for immersion in the creative process. Creative experiences span across all areas of skill building. Therefore, they are not separated out as a separate strand. Children are invited to participate in not only generating original ideas, but they are challenged to evaluate, revise and polish their sound ideas at each stage of their involvement in the music curriculum. Making individual and cooperative decisions about sound ideas give the children opportunities to build communication skills through sound. As they search for, develop and refine their own, individual sound ideas and responses through performance, composition and improvisation, they begin to view sound as a way of expressing ideas, feeling, meaning and emotion in their lives.

Presenting children with these opportunities is central to making the mission of the music curriculum realized: empowering children with skills to make music-meaningful personal expression through sound- an important part of their lives. Skill building and development takes place in four areas in the music curriculum:

I. Music Literacy
II. Performance
III. Music appreciation, critical response
IV. Interpersonal skills/ Social skills

Skill building in the area of music literacy takes place in eight concept areas: rhythm, melody, part work, form, writing, reading, composition, improvisation.

Content

The Prime Division music curriculum introduces children to the elements of music and processes that enable them to manipulate and organize sound and silence creatively. The materials through which children experience musical elements are folk songs, children's songs, and games.

The heart of the Prime music class is active involvement in music-making through the body, voice and movement. This approach recognizes the many doors through which a child can enter the musical world and provides opportunities for aural, visual and kinesthetic learners to feel successful in a multi-dimensional approach.

The nurturing of the whole musician who can feel, hear, understand and physically express music contributes to the child's ability to synthesize the intellect, senses, emotional, and physical body and ways that have important implications in their total educational experience. The social dimensions of group music-making are a central quality of the music program, while simulateously nurturing individual self-expression and respect for the individual.

Students are introduced to Kodaly-Curwen hand signs. This kinesthetic and visual tool is used in introducing and reinforcing intervallic relationships. It is also an important tool used to develop inner hearing, melodic and vocal skills.

Students are introduced to the tone ladder and stick notation, which serves as a short hand for writing rhythm. They use these visual tools of representing sound in reading, composition, inner hearing, memory and writing activities.

Skills

I. Music Literacy:

1. Rhythm:

• Developing beat competency: physical demonstration of the steady beat
• Ability to respond to tempo changes
• Differentiate between beat and rhythm of a song
• Distinguish rhythm from beat

2. Melody:

• Physically demonstrate the shape of a melodic line
• Discriminate between pitches
• Match pitch

3. Part work:

• Perform beat and rhythm simultaneausly
• Perform rhythm ostinato as an accompaniment
• Perform rhythm canon
• Perform rounds and canons

4. Form:

• Distinguish between phrases that are similar, same and different
• Physically demonstrate a feeling for phrase

5. Writing:

• Use icons to represent musical form
• Use stick notation to write rhythm

6. Reading:

• Read stick notation
• Read melody using tone ladder

7. Improvisation:

• Improvise using a variety of sound sources, such as:
  • body sounds
  • untuned percussion instruments
  • Orff instruments
  • found sounds
• Improvise melodic and rhythm answers
• Improvise in a rondo form
• Improvise new lyrics to familiar melody

8. Composition:

• Participate in group composition
• Compose new lyrics to familiar melody
• Compose rhythm in a set form using stick notation

II. Performance:

a. Vocal:

• Explore vocal range
• Participate in solo and ensemble singing
• Sing independently maintaining proper posture, breath control, dictionaccurate intonation, rhythm and tempo
• Incorporate/use expressive elements in performance
• Sing from memory a repertoire of songs
• Sing ostinatos, rounds, simple 2-part songs, partner songs
• Sing in an ensemble responding to cues of conductor

b. Instrumental:

• Play independently untuned percussion instruments and Orff instruments with appropriate technique and correct posture
• Perform steady beat using untuned percussion instruments
• Perform steady beat on Orff instruments
• Perform rhythm and melodic phrases using Orff instruments

III. Music appreciation, critical response:

• Listen to and describe examples of music of various styles, genres, historical and cultural origins using appropriate terminology in reference to identifying musical elements, expressive elements and instruments
• Listen to performances with attention and respect

IV. Interpersonal/Social skills

• Participate in class discussion according to established guidelines
• Listen to peer and teacher performance actively and respectfully
• Participate in collaborative and individual activites in a focused and self-directed manner

Materials

Johnston, Richard, Folk Songs North America Sings

Feierabend, John, Book of Children's Song Tales

New England Dance Masters, Jump Jim Joe: Great Singing Games for Children

New England Dance Masters, Down in the Valley: More great singing games for children

Burton, Bryan, Moving within the Circle: Native American Dance and Song

Bradford, Louise Larkins, Sing it Yourself: 220 Pentatonic American Folk Songs

Riddell, Cecilia, ed., Handy Play Party Games .

Choksy, Brummitt, 120 Singing Games and Dances

Erdei, Peter, 150 American Folk Songs

Bolkovac & Johnson, 150 Rounds for Singing and Teaching

Kersey, Just Five

Kersey, Just Five Plus Two

Locke, Sail Away! 155 American Folk Songs

Jones & Hawes, Step It Down Games, Play Songs, and Stories from the Afro-American Heritage

Fukuda, Favorite Songs of Japanese Children

Burnett, Dance Down the Rain, Sing Up the Corn

comp. East, The Singing Sack

Campbell, McCullough-Brabson, Roots and Branches: A Legacy of Multicultural Music for Children