ART

Art even though it is a foundation subject, and not seen as important as the core, has a range of benefits for children which will support them in all curriculum areas. Art is also a subject where children, who find the core curriculum difficult, can shine and this boosts their self esteem. It is also a subject that children naturally enjoy as there are no right or wrong answers. It allows children to express their creativity, imagination, thoughts and emotions.

Art can help develop other skills, such as, fine motor skills, hand-eye co-ordination, a sense of proportion and perspective. Art provides visual and tactile experiences through which the children can communicate what they see, feel and think.

Children develop their ideas, utilising a range of artistic techniques and processes. They can use line, tone, colour, shape, pattern, texture and form and space to express their ideas. We use 6 different artistic processes to communicate. They are drawing, painting, printing, collage, textiles and sculpture.

We expose children to artists work as stimulus materials to initiate the topic or to help develop their ideas and techniques. For example, showing them how other artists have shown movement in their work, to help them show movement in their work. We also develop their critical eye when examining works of art, using a model called CONTENT, FORM, PROCESS and MOOD.

This requires the children to focus on the piece from 4 different viewpoints. "Art" should evoke a reaction from everybody and we encourage children to express how the piece of work makes them feel and whether they like it or not. "Art is in the eye of the beholder". Children coming face to face with artists work in the public domain and even working with practising artists can be stimulating and inspiring and we try to do this when it is appropriate.

The artistic process provides the structure for our lessons, starting with the exploration and development of ideas, then the investigating, evaluating and redeveloping, and finally the making.

The key to this process is that the children investigate to see what works and what does not before they make their final piece. The use of their sketchbooks, in KS2, as a visual diary is very important as this is where they collect, explore and develop their ideas, before creating their final piece. Already this year the children have created some wonderful pieces of art work such as sculptures of people in motion, monstors from the deep, collages uses objects from thier holidays and fantastic t-shirts the designs of which highlight and protest against global issues.

In KS1 the children have been exploring colour, colour mixing shades of colour and using colour to create effects. They have also made fantastic theatre masks using mod rock. As part of our Peter Pan topic Mrs Perry guided the children as they made a wonderful large 3D relief map of Neverland. Year 1 have also recently introduced an art zone in which the children can independantly choose to piant, draw and sculpt on a daily basis.

The Foundation Stage also have a creative corner in which again the children have the opportunity to paint, draw, print and make collages everyday. The children in the Foundation Stage have been extreamly busy creating even more fantastic art work such as colloges of polar ice caps, using thier fingers to create leaves, painting pictures of thier families and making moving models of firemen.