Teaching Art and Design in Early Years to ensure Strong Foundations
The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports a child’s imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. In the Early Years Foundation Stage we provide opportunities for children to:
- develop a curiosity and interest in the designed world through investigating, talking and asking questions about familiar objects;
- develop confidence and enthusiasm through frequent exploration of media to create and develop objects;
- construct with a purpose in mind, using a variety of resources, exploring colour, manipulating materials to achieve a planned effect; and
- extend their vocabulary through talking and explaining about their designing and creating activities.
Teaching Art and Design in KS1 and KS2
The pupils at Moreton Morrell have the opportunity to develop their skills in drawing, textiles, sculpture, painting, print making and collage. These areas are developed continuously throughout the school from Pre school and Reception through to year six and the children have the opportunity to revisit skills from previous years before learning new ones. Developing skills in drawing is given a high status and children are encouraged to draw not only in art lessons, but across the curriculum. We encourage children to express individuality in their work and to keep their own personalised sketch books where they can explore ideas, be inventive and take risks. When children leave Moreton Morrell, we aim for the pupils to have a wide range of well-developed art skills in the six areas of our curriculum that they can then build on and develop further as they continue in their education. We aim to increase children’s confidence and competence when using a variety of media and techniques in art. Awareness of colour, shape, balance, focus and proportion is developed. The study of a wide range of artists and designers complements this work. We regularly use the art gallery at Compton Verney as a starting point for learning and wherever possible route the children’s learning within the local context and to enhance the children’s learning experiences and deepen their understanding and knowledge.
At Moreton Morrell, art is taught every other half term with key skills carefully sequenced across the curriculum. Our class teachers plan sequences of lessons that build on and develop the children’s skills culminating in a final piece of work.
The skills and knowledge that children will develop throughout each art topic are mapped across each year group and across the school to ensure progression. The emphasis on knowledge ensures that children understand the context of the artwork, as well as the artists that they are learning about and being inspired by. This enables links to other curriculum areas, with the children developing a considerable knowledge of individual artists as well as individual works and art movements. A similar focus on skills means that children are given opportunities to express their creative imagination, as well as practise and develop mastery in the key processes of art: drawing, painting, printing, textiles, collage and sculpture.
