Home Visual & Performing Arts
The Arts are embedded throughout the K-8 curriculum. In class, students illustrate science projects and stories, learn songs to complement cultural studies, write plays to explore different perspectives in history, and have constant opportunities to grow as artists and creators. Students perform and present multiple times a year, often writing their own material as a way to demonstrate their learning.
Middle School Drama Video
Browse student work in the drama program.
Drama provides skills not just for actors, but also for all people learning life skills. Drama-centered projects and games invite students to make the silly seriously, to fail big, to care as much about peer work as their own work, and to be curious about everything. Using performance and theater as a classroom tool allows each individual to be seen, heard, thrive, and take risks in the creative process of the stage and life. A variety of strategies are used throughout the grades including: reading, writing, projects, presentations, problem solving, movement, and scene work.
In Middle School, drama is a requirement in 6th grade, and an elective in 7th and 8th grades. Students work together as an ensemble and with partners throughout the school year. Upper grade performances and projects from past years include student-written scenes, as well as close-reading and performances of literature studied in Humanities, including most recently Macbeth and Anne Frank.
Music School Music Video
The music program at Park Day School inspires, cultivates, and trains students to embrace music, and to explore and celebrate themselves as musicians. The curriculum is grounded in six elements of music—voice, rhythm, movement, instruments (drums, xylophones, ukelele, recorder), theory/musical vocabulary and culture—at the heart of which is improvisation and creative exploration. Park Day School uses the Orff-Schulwerk approach, alongside Dalcroze and Kodaly music methodologies. Performance and group collaboration is a key element of the program.
In the lower grades, students attend music class once a week, while Middle School students take music as a requirement in 6th grade, and an elective in 7th grades and 8th grades. Music is also offered in the After School Activities Program.
Middle School Art Video
Hear from Lower School Art Teacher, Lisa O
Women’s History Month Middle School posters
Students are introduced to a range of artists while participating in a robust exploration of world art, and art as social justice work. Students have opportunities to research, analyze, emulate, and critique various works of art. Through this process they learn both technique and principles used in individual pieces. Art conversations support student awareness that art is a part of everyday life and surrounds us no matter where we go or how we live. It is typical for projects in the art studio to complement academic units in the classrooms. Artistic installations may be non-permanent, or revolve around group pieces in celebration of school themes. Creative thinking, experimentation, and the exchange of ideas are integral to the work.
In the lower grades, students attend art class once a week, while Middle School students take art as a requirement in 6th grade, and an elective in 7th grades and 8th grades. Art is incorporated into classroom activities K-8, and is also offered in the After School Activities Program.