‘To nurture talent and achievement in everyone and build the foundations for success in the 21st Century'
Holmesdale Community Infant School recognises the importance and value of Art in the curriculum. We believe that Art should be a stimulating, enjoyable and an inclusive experience for all children throughout the school. At Holmesdale we want our children to have the confidence and freedom to experiment with their own ideas, through different mediums. We encourage the children at Holmesdale to develop resilience in Art by making and learning from mistakes.
All children should leave our school with a set of basic skills in drawing and painting, sculpture, textiles, printmaking and appreciation of work from a range of artists. This year we are further developing the core skills of drawing and painting within art in Key Stage 1. Through the use of sketch books children will be given more opportunities to evaluate, analyse and re-visit their work.
Once a year art becomes the focus of the whole school when all of the children across the school take part in ‘Take One Picture’ art week held in the summer term. In 2021 all children practised the skill of weaving during this week looking at Kente weaving from Africa as inspiration. In 2022 the whole school will be practising the skill of printing during the ‘Take One Picture’ art week in the summer term.
Expressive arts and design is one of the seven areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and is used to develop a child's imagination, creativity and their ability to use media and materials. Children do this in range of ways including singing songs and making music, dancing, playing with colours, textures and design. All these approaches to expressive arts help children to represent and understand their own feelings and ideas. Children in the EYFS start to learn to explore colour and how colour can be changed; they explore texture and begin to understand that different media can be combined to create new effects. At Holmesdale we aim to provide all children in the Early Years with opportunities to experiment and explore with a range of materials and mediums.
In KS1 the skills learnt in the EYFS are further developed. Children are given opportunities to use a range of materials creatively to design and make products through drawing, painting and sculpture. They explore different techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space as well as appreciating work from a range of artists. Art is planned for and taught each half term. At present Art is planned as part of a cross-curricular approach and usually runs alongside topic based learning in the classroom. Pupils are taught to explore different media or art techniques including drawing and painting using pencil, charcoal, chalk, paint (including colour mixing) and clay. The children are exposed to a range of artists work including Klee and Andy Goldsworthy.