Lower School
Inspired Artists
According to Henri Matisse, “Creativity takes courage.” In fact, he dared to invent a completely new art form—the “cut-out”—using nothing but scissors and colored paper. Our second graders begin their courageous year as artists by creating a collage in the style of a Matisse cut-out. Later in the year, they will work in clay to transpose his famous still life of a fishbowl. Your child will make “doodle animals” in the style of Joan Miró and patterned Indian blankets reminiscent of Frederic Remington.
Andy Warhol pop art will be the inspiration for her repeating prints of a shoe. By mid-spring, life-size papier-mâché sculptures of birds will fill the art studio as part of the much-loved interdisciplinary bird unit. And all along, your child will be maintaining an artist’s sketch book so she can see how much she has grown artistically throughout the year. Music takes bravery, too. Learning to sing in head voice and perform in an ensemble may be easy enough in the music room, but on-stage performance is another story. Each year, our second graders perform a Christmas musical telling the story of Jesus’s birth. (Years from now your child will distinctly remember the part he played.) Performing for the entire Lower School and scores of parents and grandparents takes real courage—and your second grader has it in spades.
