Art and Design at Bishopthorpe Infant School

"Every child is an artist." - Pablo Picasso

Art and Design Leader - Nicola Hone

At Bishopthorpe Infant School, we aim to promote a love of art and creativity, giving our children the opportunities to explore and develop their skills through our carefully planned art curriculum. During the three years our children are with us, they will have the opportunity to engage in a variety of art forms including; drawing, painting, collage/textiles, sculpture and printing. In addition to this, we want our children to be able to take their inspiration from great artists to generate their own ideas and creativity.

Intent

The National Curriculum states that, ‘A high-quality art and design education should engage, inspire and challenge pupils, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design.’

We aim to achieve this by fostering and encouraging our children’s natural creativity, so that they can become confident and enthusiastic artists. Our Art and Design curriculum is designed to stimulate creativity and imagination while children develop their skills and explore different media, techniques and learn about different artists.

Implementation

Our Art curriculum has been carefully planned in accordance with the Early Years Framework and The National Curriculum to follow a three year rolling programme, where children develop their skills and expertise over time. The learning opportunities, technical vocabulary and skills progression for each year group will ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills.

We aim to achieve this by:

• Learning about a range of artists and their media/techniques such as; Henri Matisse - collage, Roy Lichtenstein – printing, Aardman Animations – sculpture.
• Providing opportunities for all children to practise skills and techniques in continuous provision.
• Linking Art to other curriculum areas through our whole school Three Year Rolling Programme. E.g. looking at Georgia O’keefe – Gardens and Flowers while exploring watercolours during our ‘How Does Your Garden Grow’ topic.
• Encouraging the children to talk about both their own works and that of artists and say what they like and why.
• Learning about different techniques, for example, shading, hatching, stippling and blending and using these to add detail to their artwork.
• Exploring different materials, including malleable materials like clay and a range of tools to add texture.
• Developing art vocabulary through use of common words and phrases relating to pieces of art.

Impact

Children at Bishopthorpe Infant School will become confident and enthusiastic artists who are equipped with a wide range of skills which will allow them to experiment and explore successfully when completing their own works of art. Through our broad and balanced three year curriculum, our children are given the opportunities to build and develop their skills while enjoying the self-expression that they experience in Art & Design. We firmly believe that all children are artists and aim to instill a love and appreciation of the Arts that will last a lifetime.  

Ceramics

Last year our EYFS children were lucky enough to have a workshop from Bish Bash Pot where they learned how to use clay to create their own coil pot. They were then painted and taken away to be fired in the kiln. These are the finished result, we think they look very professional!

Art and Craft Club

Each term a different year group is given the opportunity to take part in an Art and Craft Club run by Miss Addy. This is a super opportunity to explore different techniques and learn new skills. If you would like your child to take part, please keep a look out the letter which will be sent home a few weeks before the club is due to start.