Art & Design Curriculum

'Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.'

Pablo Picasso.

Our Vision

At Rimrose Hope Primary school we are passionate about ensuring that all of our children have the opportunity to express, develop and hone their artistic skills and creativity. It is our belief that ‘every child is an artist’ and we pride ourselves on providing the children with an enriched and varied art curriculum that enables the children to explore and experience the wonder of art.

Skills of a great art and design student

• An ability to explore, communicate and express themselves, ideas and feelings through drawing and a wide range of different media
• Perseverance  to work hard  improve their skill and technique in drawing, painting and sculpting with a range of materials
• Confidence to experiment with their own, individual artistic representation and style
• Skilful observation
• Critical thinking to evaluate their own pieces of art and design
• Computing skills and knowledge to experiment and develop their ideas and creativity through digital media
• An understanding and knowledge of different artists and designers, their style, history and impact upon the world

Our Curriculum

Our curriculum is devised to ensure our artists work with a variety of media, study a range of art movements and significant artists and cultures. Our lessons are carefully planned to ensure they link to other topic work to add greater purpose. Children are given time to practise and then apply their skills across their topics. Creativity, endurance and resilience are key values running through our Art & Design curriculum, and the children are encouraged to never give up, to be brave and original.

EYFS

We encourage creative work throughout the Foundation Stage, as part of the EYFS curriculum.  We plan opportunities for creative experiences using objectives set out in Development Matters.
The children’s learning includes art, music, dance, role-play and imaginative play. This range of experiences enables our children to make connections between one area of learning and another, and so extends their understanding of the world around them.
KS1

At Key Stage 1, our children are introduced to a range of materials and techniques in drawing, painting and sculpture. They are encouraged to use their imagination and creativity in their work and to begin to be reflective artists. The children take influence from famous artists and are invited to discuss similarities and differences in their works.  
KS2

At Key Stage 2, our children learn to master the skills and techniques acquired in KS1 and learn to become more critical of their own work, discussing how they could improve and refine their work. They will gain the confidence to select and discuss their choice of media. 

Our Pedagogy

‘Inductive’ teaching methods are utilised in our lessons to help captivate the children and encourage them to critically think about the work of artists. They are invited to categorise works of art, artists and other creative outcomes. Children are asked to curate their own class' work, thinking carefully about their choices. 

During lessons, we model and encourage children to use art specific language to critique the work of artists, themselves and their peers. We refer to this as 'Crit Time.' Children are encourage to form an opinion using their 'Crit Time' language to give some artistic reasoning to back up their thinking. KS2 children use their art glossaries to deepen their understanding of the vocabulary. 

Celebrating Success and Creativity

It is vital for us that the children's work is displayed and celebrated. We have created a 'Rimrose Hope Art Gallery' that enables us to  showcase the children's masterpieces across the year groups. The gallery is situated outside Mr Crilly's office. Permanent collaborative displays can also be found dotted around the school which the children have worked on with local artists. 

Art Ambassadors

We have created an amazing artists club for our art ambassadors. These children have been chosen by their class teacher and have shown a real love of art. Last year we were working on an amazing Henri Rousseau project. This year our ambassadors have been working to update our Rimrose Hope Art Gallery.

Click on the link below to find out more:

Art Ambassadors Page

Sketching and Panting Matisse's Cats

The children in KS2 have been studying Matisse and his famous artwork of cats. They sketched, compared his work to others and did paintings in the style of this work.

Using Viewfinders

The children explored and focused in on certain areas of Mary Grierson's works using a viewfinder. They worked calmly and precisely to complete their observational drawings. Aren't they beautiful?!

Drawing in KS1

The children used careful observation skills and precision drawing to sketch from images of the famous land artist, Andy Goldsworthy.

Rangoli Pattern Making

Nursery loved recreating colourful rangoli patterns using coloured sand, chalks and pastels when learning about Diwali

Shape Art in Year 1 Maths

The children explored their new topic of shape by recreating famous shape art work. They could describe the form and shapes that they could see and tried to recreate them.

Poppy Tribute

The children created a Georgia O'Keeffe style remembrance composition to honour and remember the fallen soldiers. 

Poppy Memorial

The children in Miss Pendleton's craft club created a stunning poppy memorial to honour the soldiers who lost their lives in the world wars. The children reused and painted bottle ends to create the poppy heads. How beautiful!

Displays Around the School

We proudly display the children's beautiful artwork around the school. KS1's poppy topic work, LKS2's amazing Starry Night responses and some fantastic Zoo Project work all look amazing!

Amazing Artists' Club

The children met for 6 sessions to create some amazing work inspired by Henri Rousseau's jungle work. The children built up to creating their own response in acrylic on a small canvas.

Crit Time Language

The children created mixed media seascapes for their seaside topic using watercolours and collage materials. They used their Crit Time word mat resource to discuss the texture created and the colours they used to create the depths of the ocean.

Jubilee Portraits of the Queen

In honour of Her Majesty, the children in every class created a guided draw or observational drawing of the Queen to celebrate the incredible landmark. A selection of outstanding work was then displayed on our community corridor.

Crit Time Reflection

After creating our winter scenes in oil pastel we gathered together to dicuss our work using our 'Crit Time' word mat. We talked about the form, shapes, colours and textures that we had used. We also talked about what we appreciated in our peers' work.

^{Georgia O'Keeffe Inspired Poppies}

^{The children in KS1 produced some beautiful oil pastel responses to their topic about poppies. They took inspiration from O'Keeffe's stunning poppy portfolio. Each drawing is unique and the children have worked hard to build depth through layering and blending colours together. We put them all together to create our own bigger art installation.}

Complete the Picture...

The children were challenged to complete the other side of the picture painted by Georgia O'Keeffe. They drew a pencil outline and then filled in with oil pastels ensuring to blend.

Primary Colours

The children learnt about the three primary colours and were given the opportunity to mix the colours together to discover what new colours they could make.

Summer Art Challenge Winners

Our Summer challenge winners tweeted some beautiful summer art pieces from photographs of Summer sunsets, CAD art and land art from long summer beach walks.

ECO Art

The children were challenged to create a 'plastic picture' in order to raise awareness and get people talking about the plastic crisis. The children collaged, cut, designed and decorated their ocean inspired artwork. We then displayed it outside of school for our parents to see.

Painting in the style of van Gogh

KS1 children were introduced to the artist van Gogh and asked to create a response to his paintings. The children thought carefully about their brushwork and the different marks they could make.

Jackson Pollock EYFS Art

Using the Concept Attainment pedagogy the children were introduced to the artist Jackson Pollock. They were given yes examples and no examples that were not created by Pollock. The children had to group the paintings and explain their reasons. The children were able to discuss Pollock's iconic splash technique. They then created their own work inspired by the artist.

ECO Art 

The children in EYFS learnt about the plastic crisis in the world today. They looked at the good and bad things about plastic and then decided to do something about positive with waste plastic. They created large scale collaborative art together. 

Depicting Future Careers

Children from key stage 1 and 2 had the opportunity to make ceramic plaques; created from their own designs showing  future job roles. Their work is part of a permanent display encouraging aspirations in our children.

Artist In Residence

Children in KS2 had the opportunity to work with an artist from Hope University on a Gustav Klimt inspired project, The children's work included drawing, painting and collage. Using the tree of life as a starting point the children produced detailed drawings using ink washes and a wax resit technique. They also created coloured textured papers with acrylic paint. 

KS1 Lowry-inspired Clay Sculptures

The children in Year 1 and 2 enjoyed experimenting with clay to try to create Lowry-esque figures. The rolled, bended and moulded the clay to create different shapes and forms.