Art
	The arts are essential to early learning as they empower children to communicate their thoughts, their feelings and perceptions in a dynamic language that finds unique expression through each child. The arts cultivate imagination, encourage mental plasticity, and enrich a child’s understanding both of diverse others and of the self. Our sun-drenched studio with courtyard access provides a space perfect for stimulating children’s creative visual talents both inside and en plein air. Packed cabinets contain a wide variety of media and tools for children to access as their needs evolve during the creative process. Students’ work and that of the teacher’s hangs alongside the Great Masters’ wherever space allows. The collection grows as the months pass and flows out to hallway bulletin boards throughout the buildings, as far as administrative offices, enlivening every inch of the school. Annually student artwork is exhibited outside IDS at the local libraries and in the Connecticut Art Education Association’s Youth Art Celebration. Through their work in Art over their years at IDS, children develop the creativity, innovation and problem-solving skills they can apply across every other curriculum. Throughout the process, they are guided by a responsive educator who values their diverse abilities, interests and ideas and who nurtures the beginnings of their life-long appreciation of art and beauty.

	Early Childhood Art Kindergarteners enjoy an hour-long stay in the art studio each week while first graders visit for forty minutes twice weekly. This allows for unhurried time to explore sensory and kinesthetic properties of materials and to develop skills in two- and three-dimensional representation. Projects pertain to classroom curricula and include such assignments as the construction of castles during the students’ study of medieval times or the creation of props for their annual class plays. Lower School Art Students in Second through Fifth Grade visit the art studio for forty minutes twice weekly. A spiral curriculum that revisits and builds upon skills learned previously, continuity in skill development is ensured. Students study art history and continue to experiment with various mediums including drawing, both from observation and imagination, painting, printmaking, collage, and sculpture. Projects often correlate to other curricula, such as the totem poles and clay pots students build to accompany their study of Native Americans or haunted houses built to inspire descriptive writing in language arts. Middle School Art Our Art students in Sixth through Eighth Grades meet in the studio twice a week for fifty minutes for one semester. They continue along the trajectory of the spiral curriculum established at the lower levels, now attempting projects of greater ambition and complexity, including work on the pottery wheel. Many art lessons are still driven by the curriculum in other disciplines, such as the molas or papel amate paintings made that relate to the Spanish curriculum or the tessellations designed to bring abstract math concepts to life.  One of the cross-curricular highlights is a unit on Surrealism that incorporates digital elements in the computer lab, a keynote presentation on a chosen artist, and use of photoshop to create yearbook pages. Seventh graders are introduced to French Serti while making colorful mandalas. This technique is  further explored in eighth grade when each student creates a colorful silk banner that hangs at graduation.  Trips to local museums augment the art history component of their coursework. The graduating eighth graders contribute their talents to the hallway mural project, their IDS legacy.