Physical Education: PE at the Junior School begins the journey of guiding children toward a lifetime of being physically active. We offer the children time to play alone, with a classmate, teacher or aide while exploring movement with balls, hoops, balance boards, bean bags, and catching/striking implements. Movement challenges, skills, games and time to play and explore help our students gain confidence and competence in learning physical skills.
Art: In art at the Junior School, the goal is to become familiar with the basic elements of art (color, line, shape, texture), to experiment with various art making materials (e.g. crayons, markers, paint, clay), and to strengthen their visual and tactile awareness as well as fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination. Various art processes and techniques such as drawing, painting, cutting, gluing, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, collage, and fabric arts will help to develop the necessary skills for grade level completion. We strive to cultivate creativity while learning that the process is more important than the product thereby heightening the student's personal expression and self-esteem.
Foreign Language: Students experience both language offerings French and Chinese One semester each. Students are exposed to the language and culture through authentic activities such as singing and reciting poems, dancing and miming in action as in Total Physical Response-TPR, reading books and stories, and playing indoor and outdoor games. All activities are conducted in the target language. At this young age, the emphasis is placed more on comprehension than on oral expression, and in order to make learning meaningful for students, the language curriculum is often integrated with the homeroom core curriculum.
Music: At the Junior School we love to sing and dance. In our action packed music classroom, students focus on individual skills like singing in various tonalities, improvising, listening, using language in musical ways, dancing, and learning to play different instruments. Through singing, dancing and playing, the students are introduced to 9 key concepts which are Voice, Dynamics, Pitch, Dance, Instrumental, Rhythm, Ensemble, Tempo and Notation. Our classroom time lends itself to helping each child feel comfortable using music as a medium of self-expression, best displayed through creative moments and lyrical interpretation. In addition to these goals, we also focus on performing skills such as learning to sing and dance as an ensemble while following specific directions. A few performances for the families showcase their skills and the joy of singing and dancing.
