Introduction 

At Our Lady of Hartley Catholic Primary School, children will be taught Art and Design in a way that ensures progression of skills, and follows a sequence to build on previous learning. Our children will gain experience and skills of a wide range of formal elements of art in a way that will enhance their learning opportunities, enabling them to use art and design across a range of subjects to be creative and solve problems, ensuring they make progress.

We follow a broad and balanced Art and Design curriculum that builds on previous learning and provides both support and challenge for learners. 

Our children enjoy and value Art and Design and know why they are doing things, not just how. Children will understand and appreciate the value of Art and Design in the context of their personal wellbeing and the creative and cultural industries and their many career opportunities.

Art in the Early Years

The Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage separates learning and development into seven areas (three prime areas and four specific areas). The area that relates to DT is entitled, ‘expressive arts and design’. Within this document, the following targets relate to the art. 

• Children safely use and explore a variety of materials, tools and techniques. 
• They experiment with colour, design, texture, form and function 
• Children use what they have learnt about media and materials in original ways, thinking about uses and purposes.
• They represent their own ideas, thoughts and feelings through design and technology, art, music, dance, role-play and stories. 

At Our Lady of Hartley, we are big advocates of encouraging and developing art skills in the Early Years though a mixture of adult led sessions and child initiated play.

Many of our different learning zones afford opportunities for art skills to be developed. These include: junk modelling, the indoor art area (come and visit our gallery), using chalks outdoors and using different medias to create a variety of pictures.  

Children are taught how to safely (and independently) use a variety of skills throughout the year and these skills are built upon in Year 1. 

Cross Curriculum Links

English

Art is often used to help children to describe places and characters in their mind’s eye, or to depict these aspects from passages they have read. Additionally, the skills that children often develop from reading can also be used to discuss and analyse works of art such as inference and prediction. 

Science

There are many crossovers between the subjects of science and art. Both require observations and analysis. There are also a number of artists who are well known for being scientific innovators such as Da Vinci.

Maths

Apply understanding of fractions and ratios by looking at proportions in art. Create incredible visual representations of number patters in original and creative ways, such as mosaics.

Music

As creative subjects, Art and Music are often linked. Expressing music visually or creating compositions inspired by works of art can help secure a child’s concept of the different elements of both subjects. 

DT

These subjects have strong links as they both feature design skills including (but not limited to) explaining creative ideas, accurately drawing shapes and considering colour pallets. 

Our Lady of Hartley Virtual Art Gallery 

Please see a selection of our artwork displayed below. 

Children in Year 2 extended their learning from lessons in which they created portraits in the style of Julien Pie to create portraits of Mary Nightingale. 

Using the work of Bridget Riley as a stimulus, children in Year 1 have been exploring explore the use of line in art.

Using continuous line portraits and tracing paper, children in Year 5 created these wonderful shape poems that depict a famous poet. 

Children in Year 1 created collages in the style of Elizabeth Wang to depict the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. 

Children in Year 4 have used pastels to create images of a variety of different biomes found in Europe and Russia.

Children in Year 3 have been learning about how prehistoric man created art. They used what they learnt to create their own artwork using charcoal.

Year 2 took inspiration fro Ray Lichtenstein to create their own paintings. 

Children in Year 6 have been studying the watercolour paintings of the American artist Elizabeth Wang. They painted their own paintings in a similar style, which are symbolic and represent the selfless sacrifice Jesus made when he gave His life for us.