• Visual Arts
• Music
• Dramatic Arts

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At St. Peter’s students engage in a wide range of fine arts and performing arts. Students discover the arts of other cultures, develop their creative voice, and experiment with their imaginations. From painting to pottery and sketching to sculpting; from creating kitchen confections to raising their voices in chorus; from performing on stage to playing an instrument, St. Peter’s nurtures the artistic spirit of its students.

​Visual art should be an integral component of every child’s early learning experience. Exposure to visual art in preschool not only contributes to a child’s artistic and creative growth but also to the development of perceptual, cognitive, language, and social skills.

Preschool-3 and Junior Kindergarten students are the most prolific artists at St. Peter’s. Our youngest students explore their artistic talents in the classroom and during enrichment class taught by our art teacher in the St. Peter’s Art Studio. The intent is to awaken and challenge fresh minds to be aesthetically aware and relentlessly expressive. Art encourages children to animate their endless imaginations, which inspires their creative processing for collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making. Art becomes a common language of varied media through which children can express their ideas and cultivate a discerning sensibility toward their visual environment.

Like the visual arts, music should be an integral component of every child’s learning experience. Music impacts the developing child by offering opportunities for social interaction, emotional articulation, creative expression, language development, and physical fitness.

​At St. Peter’s, students become musical virtuosos every day. Incorporating music into literacy, science, social studies, and math is a part of the daily routine. Not only do students musically engage during the regular classroom, they also attend an enrichment class taught by our music teacher in the school’s Music Conservatory. Through interactive, engaging lessons, students explore movement, rhythm, and pitch through a variety of musical styles. They sing familiar songs, learn new songs and write lyrics to new songs. They learn about the lives of classical composers and contemporary musicians and about the various instruments used to create music.

Intentional music education energizes the nervous system and stimulates the neural pathways associated with higher forms of intelligence as abstract thinking, empathy, and mathematics. Music directly contributes to the development of spatial-temporal reasoning, which is the cognitive capacity that influences reading, verbal competence, and writing aptitude.

At. St. Peter’s, all the world is a stage in the Preschool-3 and Junior Kindergarten classrooms. Without reservation, young children will mentally, emotionally, and physically immerse themselves in dramatic enactments. This bountiful capacity is a platform from which teachers introduce the dramatic arts. Students act as characters in familiar stories or create scenarios from their life experiences. These activities build memory, prompt creative expression, expand language, grow self-esteem, promote organizational thinking and develop social skills.

​St. Peter’s has a long-standing tradition for exceptional theatrical productions, and every year, Preschool-3 through fifth grade students invite audiences to attend performances presented on the fabled St. Peter's stage. Because the dramatic arts enrich learning, students participate in the entire production process. Under the direction of a theater arts professional, students create dialogue, build sets, design props and costumes, and administer tech work such as lights and sound.

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