Practical Arts

Hawthorne Valley School provides an educational environment rich in artistic and practical experiences. In the early grades, students work with a variety of natural materials and mediums. With their class teacher and other teachers, they gain dexterity and an appreciation for form, color, texture, and composition.

The formal shop classes begin in the fifth grade, when the students model in clay themes from their main lessons and learn about the quality of wood while fashioning mallets, animals, or eggs.

In the sixth grade, the children engage in precision woodwork while building a toolbox or magazine rack. They also gain an experience of convex and concave forms while carving wooden spoons.

The seventh graders use clay to build up coil pottery and model the human face. They also construct moveable wooden toys, bringing to life their classroom work in physics.

The eighth-grade students use hand tools to carve out wooden bowls and build stools with mortise and tenon joints. They also model bones and the skull to enhance and illustrate their studies of the human being in the physiology block.

The ninth graders use their muscles and skill to hammer out beginning projects in copper and steel. This complements the physics block on heat, as they experience the intense heat of the forge and the challenges of shaping hot iron and annealed copper. They also improve their woodworking skills through lessons during the dovetail-joint block.

The tenth-grade students spend seven weeks modeling a human head, and, in the technology block, they design and build scale models of wooden bridges that are tested for strength.

The eleventh-grade class learns plaster-casting techniques while sculpting reliefs in clay. In the joinery block, these eleventh graders design and fabricate furniture, which builds on their previous woodworking skills.

The twelfth-grade class learns to carve sculptures in stone and to model the human figure. In the stained-glass block, they design and assemble panels using traditional techniques.

In all these classes, the aim is to provide challenges that are appropriate for the age and development of the students and to provide practical and artistic ways to support and build on the academic work of the classroom.