Arts In Lower School
In Lower School, the arts are central to how students learn to think, make, and express themselves.
Music, visual art, design, technology, and tinkering are not electives or afternoon diversions — they are integral parts of a curriculum built on the belief that children learn best when they are creating, experimenting, and discovering. Through these programs, lower school students develop the confidence to take creative risks, the skills to bring their ideas to life, and the understanding that making something is one of the most powerful ways to understand the world.
Music
Music at Summit is a living part of the school's culture, woven into the identity of every grade. In Lower School, students engage with music as makers and performers: they sing, move, listen, and play instruments within a comprehensive, sequential curriculum designed to build real musicianship over time. They develop music literacy, explore a diverse repertoire that connects them to the wider world, and experience the full artistic process of creating, performing, and responding. Above all else, joy is our first learning objective — the foundation from which everything else grows. When students perform together, they are also learning to collaborate, to listen to one another, and to contribute to something larger than themselves.
Visual Arts
In Summit's Visual Arts program, students are invited to originate — to bring their own ideas, instincts, and imagination into the studio and see what they can make. Across two art studios and a dedicated ceramics and pottery studio, lower school students explore a wide range of media and techniques, developing both skill and creative confidence in the process. The visual arts at Summit nurture independence and original thinking, challenge students to observe closely and imagine freely, and build the fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination that support learning across the curriculum. Just as importantly, the studio is a place where students learn that their ideas have value — and that the act of making something is itself a way of knowing.
Design and Technology
Summit teaches design and technology together because, in practice, they are inseparable. Technology is an instrument for design; design thinking shapes how technology is used. In First through Fourth Grades, students work through hands-on and digital challenges that build problem-solving, collaboration, empathy, and perseverance — capacities that matter far beyond any specific tool or platform. Students learn industry-standard 3D modeling tools like SketchUp and Tinkercad, but the deeper goal is to develop students who approach problems as creators and innovators, who see a challenge and ask not "what is the answer?" but "what can I make?"
Tinkering
Tinkering is purposeful play — and at Summit, that is a serious educational commitment. Rooted in Harvard's Project Zero "Agency by Design" framework, Summit's Tinkering program is built around three core capacities: looking closely, exploring complexity, and finding opportunity. Second and Third Graders visit the Tinkering Room in five-day cycles, where they have open access to materials and the freedom to make, take apart, and build without a predetermined outcome. Projects range from things they take home to electronics they disassemble and repurpose as new supplies. What tinkering teaches cannot be delivered through direct instruction: the willingness to experiment, the tolerance for not-knowing, and the discovery that curiosity — applied with your hands — can lead somewhere genuinely new.
