Art and Design stimulates creativity and imagination. It provides visual, tactile and sensory experiences in a variety of ways. It is a means of communication and plays an important role in our West End Curriculum. It is the expression and appreciation of ideas, thoughts and feelings through a variety of media. It enables children to make thoughtful judgements, understand and respond to the world in their own unique way.
Here at West End, we want all children to experience elements of line, tone, texture, colour, shape and pattern. We achieve this through:
• Drawing
• Painting
• Printing
• Textiles
• 3D
• Collage
• Digital
Within the Art and Design curriculum we teach the children about a range of artists in order to inspire, experiment with a range of techniques and develop a good understanding of key and technical vocabulary.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, we open the children to many creating opportunities across the curriculum in order to prepare them for Key Stage One.
All year groups will experience three Art units a year so a range is covered across the school. Digital is covered in all classes within another curriculum area. It involves researching a key artist, practising the skills and techniques, designing, making and evaluating.
Researching– In the initial lesson, all children will explore a focussed artist linked to their unit of work. The children will explore the artist by creating a scrap book style page that is creative and personal to them. They will learn key facts and vocabulary about the artist. They will also choose a preferred piece of art work by discussing what they see, how they think and feel about it based on their own opinion. They will also begin to discuss the elements of art used to produce the piece.
Practising skills– Children will be given the opportunity to practise the relevant skills taught and used in their final outcome. They will engage in a range of activities using a variety of media.
Designing– The children will create and sketch their design idea and annotate with key features and what they will include. They will think about what materials they might need, what colours they might use and what skills are going to be involved.
Making– The children create their final piece and photo evidence will be recorded in their Art Books.
Evaluating– The children will evaluate their final piece of work and how well it worked.
In addition to weekly lessons, we have an Art Club and Craft Club offered as extra- curricular activities. We have also had local artist Chas Jacobs in with the children working on their painting skills and creating some wonderful master pieces which you can see displayed around the school. More recently, he has run a workshop with staff where they created a range of clay boats!
Every Christmas, all children produce a calendar to take home. Last year we choose ‘printing’ and ‘Rainbows’ as a whole school theme. We practised key skills ranging from relief printing and mono printing. Here are some examples!
Observational drawing
Every year the children do an observational portrait of themselves for the front cover of their reports. This is not only a nice little keepsake for parents but also allows us to see the ‘drawing’ progression of children from EYFS through to Year 6.
