This half term we have been doing weekly Art lessons in Lions and Panthers. In Week 1, we introduced our art sketchbooks and their purpose, how to use them to gather ideas and plan a final piece. After designing our title pages, we sat down and discussed the key questions: What is art? Why do we do art? What did you do in reception? We are going to be drawing a shoe to record our progress over the year. At the end of the year we will draw another shoe and see how much better we have got at drawing.
In Week 2, we introduced our focus artist called Piet Mondrian. He is most known for his paintings of brightly coloured squares, rectangles and bold black lines. We learnt that he likes Primary colours: red, blue and yellow and that primary colours cannot be made by mixing.
In Week 3, we used the 2D shapes in our maths areas to experiment in our sketchbooks like Piet Mondrian, going around the shapes with a pencil and colouring them in.
In Week 4, we recapped Primary colours briefly before moving onto learning about Secondary colours. Secondary colours are made when you mix red, blue and yellow together, such as orange, green and purple.
In Week 5, we learnt what a design using our word of the day song. We learnt ‘a design is when you plan what you are going to make’. The children used pencil to do their designs.
This was our success Criteria:
- A4 sketchbook page
- Masking tape lines- straight lines
- Using primary colours- blue, red and yellow
- Shapes- triangles and squares
In Week 6, we created our final piece by copying our design from the week before!
How to help your child with Art at home:
- Create your own Mondrian style picture and experiment with paints. Can you mix paints to make brown or a new colour which no one else knows?!
- Read the book ‘Mixed’ which is a beautiful story about primary colours and secondary colours which also touches on the value of difference and blended families.
- Watch the video of Austin’s butterfly on Youtube and discuss that when we are doing Art and want to improve our ideas, we might make different versions of the same thing and keep changing details. Austin’s butterfly went from strength to strength every time he tried to change it and improve his idea.
