Educators across Boston are utilizing artistic learning inside and outside the classroom as a vehicle to deepen students’ understanding across many subject areas.

“It’s a way to get students invested and excited about learning,” said Abby Hayhurst, director of external affairs for the Advent School.

The school teaches its 173 students, ranging from preschool to sixth grade, using an approach that emphasizes the importance of integrating arts with classroom learning.

“It’s based on the idea that art is a language children use to express themselves,” said Hayhurst.

This may take the form of creative visuals to represent math and science problems or art projects that are tied to a history lesson.

For example, the Advent School’s third graders practice paper weaving by hand and then fiber weaving on a loom as part of a study on Native American basketry. This opens the door to learning more about spinning wool, natural dyes and Native ways of living and thinking.

Beyond making artwork a part of classroom learning, art is also taught as a subject once a week across all grade levels, said Hayhurst.

Jamie Tara, the school’s art teacher, works with students on projects involving drawing, painting, mixed media sculptures and clay work, which can be fired in the school’s kiln.

Hayhurst added that the Advent School hosts a range of arts-focused after school programs, including everything from stop motion animation workshops to drawing classes, a fashion design course and a program where students are invited to craft their own superhero identity and accompanying costume.

At Park Street School, 225 students from preschool through sixth grade also attend a dedicated art class in addition to using art to enrich classroom learning.

“Art is integrated into units and themes,” said Kim Twitchell, the school’s director of communications.

She gave an example of a history project where second graders are each assigned an ancient god or goddess for them to research and present while wearing a handmade costume fashioned to resemble their deity.

Twitchell added that this early exposure to mythology prepares students for sixth grade, when a more in-depth unit on ancient Greece has them read “Black Ships Before Troy [from The Illiad],” observe ancient relics at the MFA and perform the early Greek play “Antigone.”

“It’s important to develop the students’ confidence,” said Twitchell, noting that all students are introduced to drama class in third grade and go on to perform plays through sixth grade. Additionally, Park Street’s students across all grade levels participate in the school’s annual Christmas and spring concerts. “We’re trying to introduce students to a lot of different opportunities,” Twitchell said, highlighting students’ exposure to visual arts, theater and music.

“Art is all-encompassing in our curriculum,” she added.

At Spruce Street Nursery School, director Christie Guevin said, “Art is woven through all aspects of a preschool curriculum.”

The school uses art every day as a method to present learning subjects to its nearly 50 students between the ages of two and five.

Projects where students decorate shoe boxes to look like their homes and create self-portraits using paint and yarn start encouraging self-reflection at an early age.

Guevin added that students learn to work with more sophisticated tools and mediums, such as scissors and paper mache, as they progress through the program.

“We don’t have a specific time for art each day; art is everything,” said Guevin.