Students in preschool classes have access to a varied array of arts materials with free choice access daily. Teachers facilitate creativity by making special materials available and encouraging and facilitating individual and group projects. Students are exposed to art works by artists from a variety of cultures and provided opportunities to engage in art activities relating to their arts education, from "cave" painting with natural materials to Impressionist pastel portraits to painting on rice paper. Students also take field trips to local art museums with appropriate hands-on activities. Preschool students participate equally in the annual Spring Arts Festival.

Students in kindergarten through 8th grade also have arts materials available in the classroom for use with regular curriculum activities. These students also go to art classes weekly with arts teacher Cindi Hardwicke. Cindi has designed a curriculum that emphasizes creative use of materials and creative expression for all students. Each student is helped to visualize, plan, and carry out art activities throughout the year a variety of art materials and media. Activities are often related to art education or special curriculum topics that a particular class or group of students may be engaged in. For instance, kindergarteners learn about Monet and create their own art interpretations of Monet's garden. A group of older students learned about Audobon, studied and drew native Susquehanna River birds, and studied bird habitats in an integrated science and arts study. They subsequently became politically active, drawing local and national attention in their bid to preserve habitat on the river. Older students may also elect to take "special art" classes weekly in addition to their regular art class. These classes emphasize topics based on the student's interests. Students can also develop photography and print-design skills when they join the group that produces the annual Londonderry yearbook.

The focus of art education at Londonderry is to help students understand art as a form of creating and enjoying beauty, depicting the world, expressing ideas, and/or delivering a message. Further, the students practice art as a means to helping them look at understanding ideas from different perspectives and expressing themselves through a visual media. Every student is encouraged to enjoy the process of creation and develop a lifelong interest in the arts. Students visit art museums both locally and in Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. as part of the arts curriculum. Students at Londonderry have the opportunity to enter in local and worldwide art competitions, and all students participate actively in the annual Arts Festival.

The Spring Arts Festival is a day long celebration of the arts. Students throughout the school visit each other's classrooms to participate in visual arts, music, and drama activities that are selected, planned, and offered by each class. Later in the day, students in small groups who wish to can participate in an informal show, singing songs, performing mini-plays, etc. for the whole school and visitors.

At Londonderry, music is everywhere, whether it be students humming and whistling as they work or singing a song to welcome each other in their classroom each morning. Early Wednesday morning, a parent can be heard strumming guitar and singing folk songs in the hallway outside the office to whomever passes by or pauses to join in. Music activities are an integrated part of many activities and a special focus, as well

Students in preschool and kindergarten classes use songs as part of their daily routines throughout the day, often combined with movement or as a way of enhancing learning about a special topic. Students have access to rhythm instruments in their classrooms as part of the available choices of materials at all times. Students learn songs, listen to music, and try out instruments of various languages and cultures in December as part of the whole school's immersion in cultures for the annual International Day Celebration. Teachers periodically expose young students to "reading" music as a language, providing appropriate activities to learn about notes and their relationships to sounds and simple songs. Kindergarten students also enjoy folk and action songs to guitar with music/drama specialist Sandy Westerman in the latter half of the year.

Older students have an opportunity to participate in chorus for the all-school spring musical play. They practice weekly in mixed age groups with the drama and music specialists. Students may also choose to learn choreography as they plan dance routines and sound system production for the spring musical. Students in 1st through 8th grades also may select music and dance as special classes on the Wednesday afternoon classes referred to at Londonderry as "Wacky Wednesday." In the second half of the year, students in 5th grade up may also elect to participate in the traditional, but un-traditional Londonderry " rock bands." Students practice instruments and singing to perform several "rock" songs in late spring for the school. The students in "band" name their own bands, decide who will perform what functions (vocals, keyboards, drums, and guitars), and practice the songs they've selected to get timing and style down on a weekly basis for the second half of the year.

Students are also exposed to music through special subjects and topics. Flamenco dancers might be visiting one day for Spanish class or students might be choreographing music during computer classes to accompany a program they are working on. Students might be painting to music for inspiration or to learn more about the "times" of a certain artist or school. Field trips to enjoy symphony music are an annual experience. Londonderry has also had artist in residence Tom Reese work with all ages to create musical instruments called "ocarinas" and learn to perform with them. And the school sponsors a bi-annual concert for the community featuring the inspiring and beautiful voice of children's artist Red Grammar.

Drama

Drama at Londonderry is alive and well, from pretend play as a firefighter in preschool through a Shakespearean act performed by the 7th-8th grade during an Elizabethan study. At Londonderry, performing and expressing oneself through drama becomes a natural form of expression for each student, and all students become remarkably comfortable with this creative form of expression that is so daunting to many. It is a way for everyone to enjoy and experiment with trying out a different persona, expressing an idea with flair, and thrilling to a live audience.

Preschool, kindergarten, and some older classes have a variety of props and dress up clothes available to encourage acting out roles and ideas to enhance learning about the world around them. Young students often like to create plots or ask a teacher to tell a story they can act out or watch, as the spirit strikes them. They may also practice a play based on a beloved literature book and perform it for other classes or their special big friends in the school. Older students may act out scenes from literature or history as a way of helping learning become truly assimilated. Or perhaps one will hear older students speaking Elizabethan English throughout the day as they become inspired by their studies. Students throughout the school attend drama performances in the community.

A highlight of Londonderry dramatic offerings are the class plays and the Annual All-School Musical. Prior to Thanksgiving break, preschool and kindergarten classes each select, plan, and act out a play or song on stage for the school and parent audience. These young students help select what roles they want for their play of choice, may write lines, and often create all aspects of their costumes and scenery, as well. Older students write their own plays or model them on favorite literature to perform on a monthly basis by class. They also create all costuming and scenery for their performances.

The All-School Musical features all of Londonderry's 185 students in one performance! Sandy Westerman and parent and teacher volunteers help produce this incredible, original spectacular on a yearly basis. Preschool and kindergaren classes perform on-stage as a group, with their "number" as part of the plot of the whole play. First grade and up perform as cast, chorus, stage managers, announcers, lighting and stage crew, etc. to pull off this annual event. The students help write lines for the play, choreograph routines, create scenery in special art classes, create costumes, and practice, practice, practice throughout the year in preparation. In recent years, the play has been performed on-stage at Harrisburg's new Whitaker Center for Science and the Arts.

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