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Visual Arts
The arts at Green Vale School are a vital part of our educational journey, fostering creativity, imagination, and critical skills that extend beyond the studio.
Starting in Early Childhood, our art program lays the foundation for essential skills like improved eye-hand coordination, shape and pattern recognition, and self-expression. As students progress through Lower and Upper School, they explore a rich tapestry of artistic concepts, media, and cultural contexts, allowing them to not only develop their artistic abilities but also connect the visual arts to a broader world of knowledge and understanding.
Early Childhood Art
The Early Childhood art program fosters imagination, creativity and improves eye-hand coordination, which are the beginning steps to writing. Art helps distinguish shapes and patterns, which are the necessary steps to learn to read. It also enables children express themselves and obtain spacial awareness.
Read more about Early Childhood art.
Lower School Art
In Lower School art, students experiment with materials, discuss artwork from a range of movements and periods, and learn to use art vocabulary. The school year starts with a self-portrait as an opportunity to reflect on each student’s identity and growth. Throughout the year, Green Vale artists study media and ideas that relate to and reinforce themes covered in their academic classes. From the Harlem Renaissance to Ancient Mesopotamia, students carry their understanding of movements and societies into the studio. Field trips bring objects and aesthetics discussed in class to life. Concepts covered include the elements of art, the color wheel and color theory, and perspective. Students explore clay, printmaking, painting, pastel, paper marbling, and cardboard construction, among other media. The focus of the program is emulating ideas and movements while encouraging curiosity, experimentation, and self-expression.
Upper School Art
In the Upper School art studio, students expand their knowledge of art media and elements of composition and design while exploring new ways of using familiar tools and materials. Through close observation and sustained investigation, students strengthen expressive skills while developing individual and global perspectives on art. Students explore the societal, cultural, and historical contexts of art and connect the visual arts to other disciplines.
Field Trips
Green Vale’s proximity to New York City, the Nassau County Museum of Art, and the Long Island Museum of American Art, History, and Carriages allows us to incorporate full and partial-day field trips into our art curriculum. 3rd Grade visits the American wing at The Metropolitan Museum; 4th Grade visits The Morgan Library; 5th Grade visits the Egyptian wing; and 6th Grade visits the Greco-Roman antiquities. Additionally, 6th Grade visits The Cloisters in Upper Manhattan.