Co-Curriculars

Creativity through the arts is an essential component of the educational process. Students are imaginative by nature and create works of art through drawing and painting, constructing and manipulating, molding and building. The Chapin art program is designed to encourage, teach, support, and enhance the techniques and skills needed to foster life-long creativity and appreciation of the arts.

We emphasize process by building on the skills learned the preceding year. Printmaking, painting, drawing, pottery, collage, weaving, and paper maché are explored at each grade level. Art vocabulary, techniques and skills are presented with each medium and we work closely with grade level and subject matter teachers to extend and enrich their curricula.  Through these processes students learn to think creatively, employ critical thinking skills, express ideas and come to recognize and appreciate the aesthetic qualities inherent in art.

Based on the understanding that all children are musical, and that music is a way of knowing and understanding one’s self and the world, the Chapin School music curriculum employs a sequential and developmentally appropriate curriculum, which nurtures in students the qualities of self expression through music, cooperation with others to create and perform music and a lifelong appreciation and enjoyment of music.

Central to the music curriculum are the fundamental music processes in which humans engage:  performing, creating and responding to music.  Through these activities, students learn to think creatively, employ critical thinking skills and come to recognize and appreciate the aesthetic qualities inherent in music.  Emphasis is also placed on music literacy, providing students an important tool with which they can explore music independently and with others.  Finally, because music is reflective of human culture, students are exposed to a diversity of musical styles; are led to understand music’s relationship to history, culture and units of study in other academic disciplines; and are given the tools to make informed musical judgments throughout their lives.

Third and fourth grade students participate in a chorus.