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 design 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.

The learning opportunities, technical vocabulary and skills progression for each year group ensures progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills.

We 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.

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.