Key Stage 1 Art

Children explore colour, shape, space, pattern and texture to develop their visual, tactile and sensory understanding of the materials and processes in art, craft and design activities. They learn to represent their ideas about their own identity and experiences, and the familiar objects, materials and places around them.

What will they learn?

Children will also focus on the work of artists, craftspeople and designers by asking and answering questions like: ‘What is it like?', What is it made from?', ‘How is it made?' and ‘What do I think and feel about it?'

The expected Level 2 at the end of this stage should see your child able to use a variety of materials and processes to make and express ideas they have explored, to point out differences in others' work, and to say how they can improve their own work.

Lesson examples

Year 1 children experiment with a variety of papers and fabrics to create different effects, like folding, scrunching, tearing, cutting, deconstructing, pleating and joining. They colour their designs with dyes made from beetroot, brown and red onion skin and blackberries.

Year 1 children bring in pictures of themselves for a project on self-portraits. After discussing the pictures the children investigate a range of drawing media and marks they can make to show, for example, textures of hair or pattern on clothing. They explore how marks can help communicate ideas about themselves and how they would like to be seen by others (for example, big and bold, quiet and thoughtful). 

A Year 2 class is taught how artists create storyboards to show the sequence of events in a story. They then create their own frame-by-frame illustrations to tell the story of an event from their lives or favourite television programme. Oscar became very animated and acted out events from an episode of Star Trek to help capture his imagination on paper.