Within our federation we aim to stimulate the children’s creativity and imagination through high quality art and creative experiences and art is promoted through all areas of the curriculum where appropriate. In Key stage 2, art is often taught alongside topic work, which helps to bring topic learning to life.
We aim to provide an exciting and challenging art curriculum. Children are encouraged to discuss and express their own opinions through their art works and our art curriculum aims to engage, inspire and challenge pupils and equip them with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art. We endeavour to enable and assist the children in the development of their skills and mastery of art and design experiences and techniques during the primary phase of their education.
The children at Toftwood Junior School regularly use their personal sketch books. These are used to record their observations, for working out plans, ideas and designs and for developing techniques through practice and experimentation. They also provide the opportunity to review and revisit ideas as they move through the school.
Art Summer 1
Reception
In Reception this half term, we have been exploring art both in class and outside in Ted’s Den. We have been experimenting with different materials including pipe cleaners, buttons, gems, pebbles, leaves and sticks to make our artwork. We had to think carefully about the material we chose to represent different elements in our art frames!
Year 1
In Year One we have been looking at the artist Jackson Pollock during our Planet and Beyond topic. We learnt about the techniques he used in his artwork and had a go at creating some of our own splatter paintings. We discovered that flicking the paint created lots of different patterns including lines, dots and curves. We had so much fun making our Pollock inspired galaxy paintings!
We also looked at the work of Andy Goldsworthy and created our own sculptures out of natural materials on the school grounds. We used leaves, grass, stones and feathers to make pictures on the playground.
The children also used natural materials to weave. They found natural objects and weaved these between some pieces of string to create some lovely pictures. They also used the leaves to print into clay.
Year 2 We have been very busy in Year Two this half term. We explored the artwork of the American artist Andy Warhol, as part of our Art Around the World topic. We drew our own pictures and photocopied them to make four exact copies, in the style of Warhol. We then experimented with oil pastels to add bold colours to our work.
We then learnt about Australasian aboriginal ‘dreamings’. We explored some material with aboriginal prints to look at the colours and techniques used. We cut out bold designs and symbols in black sugar paper to create waterholes, footsteps, people and animal tracks in our dreamings. We noticed aboriginal paintings use lots of repeating dot patterns, which we then incorporated into our own art by dipping the ends of paintbrushes into paint.
The children also created some paintings inspired by the continent of Asia. We were inspired by the cherry blossoms that can be found in Asia throughout the Spring and the children recreated these with paint. They thought carefully about the colours they would need and were successful when mixing red and white to create the perfect shade of pink.
Art Spring 2 2024
Reception
The children in Reception have been doing observational paintings of daffodils. They talked about the different colours and how the paint could be mixed to create lighter shades such as mixing yellow and white will make light yellow.
Year 1
In Year 1 this half term, the children have been learning to sketch and shade to add depth and texture to their drawings. They used these techniques to draw a planet of their choice and were able to illustrate how the light from the sun creates highlights and shadows. We also discussed how we can make the planets look spherical using these techniques.
Year 2
In Spring 2 the children in Year 2 have started the ‘Art Around the World’ topic. They have learnt about the artist Wassily Kandinsky and they created their own painting and matching collage using his ‘Concentric Circles’ painting as inspiration. They will continue this topic in Summer 1 and create some more artwork in preparation for the art exhibition ‘Toftwood Tate’ when they will show the rest of the school and their grown-ups their artwork!
Art Spring 1 2024
Reception
The children in Reception have been doing lots of Art related to their ‘Fantasy’ topic. They have been busy learning how to make pirate hats from folded paper, designing aliens and have taken part in a guided drawing session to learn how to draw Supertato.
Year 1
This half term we have been focussing on the different seasons. We researched about each season and looked at the different colours we could see and how the trees changed over time. The children then drew a landscape scene including aspects of each of the four seasons. They thought carefully about their use of colour when colouring in their pictures. Finally, we added a window frame to complete their artwork.
Year 2
We have learned about the artist Claude Monet, in Year Two this half term. We looked at his famous painting ‘The Water Lily Pond’ and studied the techniques he used to create this. We then visited the pond in our school grounds to make observations about what we could see. We then used watercolour palettes to create our own pond paintings in the style of Claude Monet, carefully thinking about the colours and brushstrokes.
Art Autumn 2 2023
Reception
In reception we have been exploring the creative areas to make lots of artwork. We have also been working on explaining what we have made and sharing our knowledge of how to make things with others. We have explored lots of different materials and media whilst using our imaginations to create with purpose.
During our ‘Celebrations’ topic work we looked at pictures of fireworks and created our own firework art using brushes, cardboard tubes, paint and glitter.
Year 1
In Year 1 this half term, the children have been using different materials to print in order to see which material gave them the best texture for painting snow. The children then selected their favourite material to make a snow globe with them inside. The children also found out which colours mixed together to make other colours.
Year 2
In Autumn 1 the children have learnt about the Impressionist artist Vincent Van Gogh. The children have taken inspiration from his Starry Night painting and have sketched and painted their own versions. The children have focused on including the swirling paintings and deep colours that he used in his own.
We also had a go at using chalk and oil pastels to create a day and night picture. The children worked on their blending to create some beautiful pieces of art. They also incorporated the shadow of a tree to show it both in the day and at night.
Art Autumn 1 2023
Reception
In reception we have been exploring the creative areas to make lots of artwork. We have also been working on explaining what we have made and have practised sharing our knowledge of how to make things with others. We have been working hard at practising our safe scissor skills and using our imaginations to create with purpose. During our harvest morning we created hedgehogs using paint and fork
Year 1
The children have been learning about their favourite animals this term as part of their topic learning. They chose their favourite animal and used a photo of the animal to draw their own. They looked at the different shapes they could see and thought carefully about the sizes of the animals different body parts. They then painted their animals, thinking selectively about the colours they chose.
Year 2
In Autumn the children have designed and created their own medieval shield. The children thought carefully about the colours that they would use for their shield, many using typical Nordic colours such as gold, yellow, green. They then added their own icons to their shield, they did this by creating a stamp which they stamped onto their painted shield. The results were great!
Art Summer 1 2024
Year 3
We have focussed on the artist Jeannie Baker and the text ‘The Window’ as an inspiration for our artwork. Using mixed media we created a Jeannie Baker inspired collage of a view from a window.
The children have used their knowledge of blending paints to create different shades and tones to replicate sky and grassland as a background and then used a variety of materials for collaging for texture. Once they were happy with their backgrounds, they gathered natural resources from the school grounds to recreate their window scenes. They thought carefully about placing natural resource on their collages.
Year 4
This half term, we have learnt about Claude Monet and have used his paintings to inspire a watercolour creation of water lilies. We have created a fact file of Claude Monet and have experimented with blending paints, using sponges and brushes to create a piece of art based on the impressionist’s famous paintings.
We have also explored the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. We have used mixed media to create the sculptures. We used foil to produce the shapes we wanted, then applied masking tape to it. Finally we very carefully added clay to create our sculptures, these range from animals to peoples in different poses.
Year 5
This half term, we have created collages inspired by our Geography topic of Norfolk landscapes. We have focussed on the perspective of fore and back ground and the effected of using mixed medias.
Year 6
This half term we have observational bird drawings. We used our sketching techniques of contour, cross, random and hatching as well as stippling to complete a series of observational drawings. After each drawing, we evaluated our art work and annotated the areas we felt we could improve and the things that we liked.
Art Spring Term 2024
Year 3 Spring Term
In Year 3 we have been looking at our focus artist Georgia O’ Keeffe, a 20th century artist who experimented with bold colours and different techniques when creating her beautiful pieces. In particular, we have carefully studied O’ Keeffe’s close-up paintings of flowers. The children have worked hard to emulate O’ Keeffe’s techniques by first creating a viewfinder which they used to pick a section of their flower to sketch, and then sketching two of these into their books. After evaluating which one they liked best and why, the children then sketched the outline of their flower at a larger scale, ready to be completed using our chosen medium of oil pastels. Once they had explored a number of techniques, such as sgraffito and dry blending, Year 3 then meticulously filled in their sketch using oil pastels to replicate the shades and tints of their flowers.
Year 4 Spring Term
In Art, the children learned about Islamic patterns. The children researched different elements of Islamic art such as calligraphy, geometric patterns, vegetal (relating to plants) and repetition of patterns. They particularly enjoyed discovering that most Islamic art will have a small deliberate mistake to show that nobody is perfect! After creating their final design, the children then made a printing tile out of string, card and other found items and used it to print a repeating pattern into their books. We have all enjoyed this topic as we have been able to use a range of different mediums such as pencil, string, cardboard and paint! The final task involved evaluating their work by recognising what worked well, what could be improved next time and what they had learned throughout the project.
Year 6 Spring Term
In Year 6 we have developed our collage skills by creating our own North American landscapes in the style of American photographer, Ansel Adams. We used only black, white and grey paper to create our collages based on some of the scenes that Adams captured. To develop our skills further we used paint to create a mixed media piece of art.
Art Autumn 2 2023
Art
Year 3 Autumn termYear 3 have focussed on developing their sketching skills using the techniques above to work on texture, line and tone when sketching a variety of Egyptian artefacts.
As part of a cross curricular theme, we looked at some of the works of Antoni Gaudi. Gaudi is a famous artist, architect and is often referred to as “God’s architect”. Adfter learning about his work the children were inspired to create their own repeating patterns using nature as a muse.Year 4 Autumn term
Year 4 have focussed on the ancient world of Rome and have replicated beautiful mosaics from this period. They have created a 3D piece of artwork, combining this with their Design and Technology unit. Year 4 made mosaic cake stand.
They challenged themselves by creating their own tesserae using foam squares and reducing the size of these to recreate the small pieces of tile used by Ancient Roman artists. The children sketched their mosaic in their sketchbooks before recreating it with the tesserae.
Year 5 Autumn term
Year 5 have linked their artwork with their science unit on planets and shadows. They have created a piece of art using watercolours, focussing on the techniques of tinting and shading. We have considered different shading techniques such as, hatching, cross-hatching, scribbling and stippling. They have explored the use of both oil pastels and watercolours as medium to create artwork with and have created their own watercolour sunset of Stonehenge.
Year 6 Autumn term
Year 6, focussed their art around the history unit of World War 2. Recreating images of paratrooper paintings by using mixed media and collage techniques.