St Margaret's Infant School

Take a look at some of our wonderful artwork produced at St. Margaret's. We have focus Art & Design weeks in school as well as undertaking Art within our curriculum offer.

Our Art & Design curriculum intent begins within our Nursery then Reception classes. Learning in our EYFS is on the whole, play-based and takes place indoors and outside. There is a balance between adult-initiated experiences (guided learning) and child-initiated experiences to help foster a love of the arts but also to develop key skills and knowledge in order to build on these as our children move into Key Stage 1. Adults take children’s interests and strengths as a starting point, seeing each child as a competent learner as they offer frequent ‘core experiences’ to develop our children’s expressive arts and design skills. These are intrinsically linked to developing the children’s communication and language skills, physical development and personal, social and emotional development so that they have the foundation skills to be built on to be able to talk about their own and other’s artwork, respect differences in each other’s creative work and that of other cultures and the physical skills essential to developing fine motor skills for manipulating and using tools and materials effectively as they progress into Key Stage 1. 

Look at some of the ways EYFS express themselves through art...

Year 1 carried out some wonderful Art & Design work in their Geography and Science linked Art unit, linked to the National Flowers of the UK. They received a visit from a local, visiting artist in our school community, who not only shared her artwork with them but also provided live art work to support them in creating their own. Look at some of the wonderful watercolour roses they produced, demonstrating their super colour knowledge and skills. The children then went onto developing their understanding of shape and form using clay to create some intricate ceramic roses - soon to be kiln fired in our very own school kiln. 

Year 2 have carried out some fiery Art & Design work in their History linked Art unit, related to the Great Fire of London. The children generated ideas from looking at historical paintings and prints that depicted the Great Fire and used these to explore how artists used the elements of colour, shape, form, line, dot,  pattern and tone. They built on their Yr 1 colour knowledge skills to learn about harmonious colour schemes and 'hot' colours on a colour wheel before practicing to mix and paint their own fiery backgrounds. Next, the children created sketches to explore buildings in 1666, like St. Paul's Cathedral or Tudor homes, before looking at some more modern day landmarks. They chose whether to create a collagraph print, depicting the Great Fire of 1666 or whether to create a scene of what the Great Fire of London today might look like. After printing their final piece, they considered how line, pattern and tone could enhance their finished piece, when adding a smoky effect to the foreground. 

One of our whole school Art & Design Weeks, focused on developing children's colour theory knowledge and skills, through the book 'Swatch - the girl who loves colour' by Julia Denos. All children took part, from Nursery through to Year 2 to create a huge, collaborative colour display. Nursery explored the primary colours; Year R explored the primary colours and pastel tints by making them ‘light by adding white’; Yr 1 explored Secondary colours; and Yr 2 went further to learn about harmonious colour schemes. Look at how all our individual pieces have collaborated to make an array of colours - all in different styles and with different textures!

Within our Cultural Weeks, Art & Design is often carried out when exploring and learning about the culture of a country. Both individual and collaborative art has been produced and we have focused on a mixture of artist, who have originated from particular countries, or focused on a style of art that is native to the country. Look at our wonderful art, inspired by Art from Around the World...