Art

At Beechwood, the Art and Design curriculum is rooted in the school’s underlying aims, ethos and values. The core content of the curriculum develops over time; ensuring links between each year group are explicitly made and built upon. 

The Beechwood Art curriculum aims to:

• equip pupils with the knowledge and skills to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design;
• develop pupils’ proficiency in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art and design techniques; 
• develop an understanding of particular characteristics and application of different artistic techniques;
• equip pupils with knowledge about some great artists, architects and designers and their role in influencing and shaping world culture;
• share ideas, experiences and imagination, to enable children to embody their creativity and personality through different mediums;
• engage, inspire and challenge pupils throughout the Art curriculum and give them the opportunity to experiment, invent and create their own works of art, craft and design. 

We are Artists at Beechwood Primary School

Reception

Children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials on a large scale outdoors and on a smaller scale indoors. Children have produced artwork during our Ourselves topic using paint, collage and loose parts.

Year 1 explored the self-portraits of different artists such as Picasso and Matisse and they used different media to create their own self-portraits

Year 2 learned to print in different ways and designed their own printing blocks using South African patterns to inspire them.

Year 3 began to identify the foreground and the background as they created their own ideas for images from the Anglo-Saxon myth Beowulf. They mixed their own types of colours to create different moods for their work.

Year 4 investigated Ancient Greek pots and used the images and patterns they drew to help them design, make and decorate their own pieces of pottery.

Year 5 worked with an artist to observe, draw and discuss the work of William Morris. They used some of his ideas as the basis for the tiles and designs that they created.

Year 6 explored the works of different French Impressionist painters and they used different media to develop their own pieces of Impressionist inspired work. These finished pieces are based on how they see Roundhay Park.

Top tips for becoming an amazing artist.

1) Draw! Artists spend a lot of time practising and this is how they improve. Drawing is relaxing and it is great fun. You could do observational drawings of objects or places around you. You could draw from your imagination or you could look for step by step videos that teach you to draw whatever you are interested in.

2) Look around you to find something you are interested in and use it to help you create something connected to it. you could draw, paint, colour or collage.

3) Find out about different famous artists and the ways they worked or work now. Do you prefer abstract art or do you like work that is more realistic? Are you interested in art with people and animals in it or places like cities or the countryside? Do you have a favourite artist who can help inspire you?

4) Remember, artists choose to work in ways that interest them and they choose to create what is important to them. You can do that too. Your art can reflect whatever is important or of interest to you. You can choose your own style, your own colours and the media (paint, pencil, pastels, collage, clay etc) that you use.

5) Practise, experiment and develop your ideas to improve your work. Artists often make their piece of work a number of times before they are happy with the finished result.

6) Most importantly: have fun

We look forward to seeing what you create.