Forestville Academy

The seventh grade students at Forestville School study medieval world history. It is a project-based program that integrates the arts, including literature, architecture, music, visual art, performing art, culinary arts and clothing. Our newly adopted textbook provides a thorough understanding of the California state standards curriculum for seventh grade history. Students also experience many hands on activities that enhance the state standards based curriculum. Sumi-e brush painting, Gyotaku fish printing, a castle building competition, African mask making and delicious food celebrations are a few of the added experiences to our year. Additional activities enhance the classroom experience with the intention of helping students understand ‘what a place was really like to live in way back then’. Guest presenters add an extra dimension to our learning by sharing their expertise in African story telling and drumming, Asian martial arts and folk dancing, just to name a few. Our goals are to help students develop as citizens of Forestville, our country and the world community. Community service, or service learning is included in a project that continues throughout the school year. Finally, our most important goal is to guide students in developing skills to become excellent researchers and historians.

The 4-8 Art Program at Forestville Academy is an award-winning program, taught by Carol Swanson. The art curriculum provides our students with exposure to a wide variety of media including drawing, painting, clay, printmaking, sculpture, fibers, and graphic art. Our students develop sequential skills each year by building on their knowledge from the previous year’s activities. Each activity focuses on teaching art process, technique, art history and aesthetics. These art activities are targeted to teach the California State Standards for the Visual Arts. At Forestville Academy we believe that art is not an extra curricular activity. Art is BASIC. In several educational studies (most recently at the University of Texas), results show that when students study art their test scores go up, their grades in math and science go up, and they become great creative inventors. Studying art also provides opportunities to learn about culture. These are important abilities that we want our children to have as adults.