“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Ephesians 2:10
At St. Clare’s, we believe that creativity and artistic expression are integral to God’s design. By learning and expressing themselves through art, children can explore their unique gifts and contribute positively to the world around them.
Catholic Social Teaching is integral to our whole curriculum. Here are some examples of where this can be seen in Art and Design:
Dignity of the Human Person InYear 1 children study self-portraiture. We believe every human person is made in the likeness of God. This is a gift that we all share as fellow human beings and we celebrate our differences and the characteristics that make us unique.
Stewardship of God’s Creation In year 3 children study the work of Monet. They look closely at how artists appreciate the natural environment created by God. Year 1 also look at artist impressions of the beauty of weather and the seasons.
Dignity of Work We recognise that work, such as that done in Art, is a form of participation in God’s creation. At St. Clare’s, we instil a strong work ethic in our students by encouraging them to take pride in their artistic efforts and achievements.
Family and Community During the school year, pupils have the opportunity to share their work with their family and the school community. Pupil’s also reflect on the work of artists and the communities they serve.
Intent
At St Clare’s we know that art stimulates creativity and imagination. It provides visual, tactile and sensory experiences, and a special way of understanding and responding to the world. It enables children to communicate what they see, feel and think, through the use of colour, texture, form, pattern and different materials and processes. It is our intent at St Clare’s for our children to become involved in shaping their environments through art activities. We want them to learn to make informed judgements, and aesthetic and practical decisions. The children will be guided and given the opportunity to explore ideas and meanings through the work of artists. Through learning about the roles and functions of art, they will explore the impact it has had on contemporary life and on different periods and cultures. At St Clare’s it is our intent that we want the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts to enrich all our lives.
Implementation
During the Early Years, young children will be given the opportunity to explore colour, texture, shape and form in two and three dimensions. The children will have access to a wide range of constructions, collage, painting and drawing activities, using appropriate tools and art materials. In order to tap into their artistic potential, the children will be encouraged to develop their own creative ideas.
During Key Stage 1, Art is about expanding children’s creativity and imagination through providing art and craft activities relating to the children’s own identity and experiences, to natural and manufactured objects and materials with which they are familiar, and the locality in which they live. Children will explore the visual, tactile and sensory qualities of materials and processes and begin to understand and use colour, shape and space, pattern and texture, to represent their own ideas and feelings. Children will focus on the work of artists, craftspeople, other cultures, and sculptors and designers by asking and answering questions, such as: ‘What is it like?’ ‘What do I?
In Key Stage 2 children will develop their techniques, including their control and their use of materials with creativity, experimentation and an increasing awareness of different kinds of art and craft. Children will create sketch books to record observations and use them to review and revisit ideas. In Key Stage 2 children will be encouraged to improve their mastery of art and design techniques, including drawing, painting and sculpture with a range of materials. The children will learn about great artists, architects and designers in history. In both the Key Stages the children will look at the elements of: Shape, form, space, colour, tone, texture, pattern and lines.
Impact
Pupils at St Clare’s will be able to use a range of materials to design and make products. Children will gain skills that enable them to use drawing, painting and sculpture to share their ideas, experiences and imagination. Children will create sketch books to record their observations and use them to review and revisit ideas, and collect visual material to help them to develop their ideas. At St Clare’s children will develop techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space using clay and printing to a large scale and in 3D. Children improve their mastery of techniques, such as drawing, painting and sculpture with materials (e.g. pencil, charcoal, paint, clay). Children have an awareness of the work of a range of artists and craftsmen in history, and will be able to describe the differences and similarities between different art forms.
Whilst at the IWM North, the eagle-eyed children spotted an original Lowry painting! We spent time looking at the figures and discussed the inspiration for the painting being WW2. What joy this was to see as we studied this artist in Autumn 1!
Nursery class have enjoyed making sparkly firework paintings and creating beautiful firework patterns using chalk.
Today we used mirrors to look at our facial features and create our own self portraits.
In art this week we have been looking at the artist Sarah Sedwick. We have collected different fruit and cutlery to make a similar piece of still art work.
Year 4 have had a busy first week, we developed our own class charter, we picked articles from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that we thought we needed in our class. We created pictures of a famous Liverpool landmark using a variety of techniques (can you guess where it is?), consolidated our knowledge of 4-digit numbers using manipulatives, learned what partitive nouns are and found out that ‘Being different is the best thing ever!’ What a week!
Year 5 had a wonderful afternoon creating Ancient Greek comedy and tragedy masks. The children are extremely creative and they really enjoy expressing themselves through art.
Year 5 had a wonderful morning at the Palm House. They took part in art and craft activities. They also learnt about the history of the beautiful structure and about some of the fabulous plants which can be found there.
Year 5 spend the day creating their own comic books with fantastic storylines and illustrations. We have lots of future Stan Lees in our midst.
One of our fantastic year 5 children with his brilliant drawing of the Liverpool skyline.
Year 5 experimented with different ways to make Greek comedy and tragedy theatre masks.
In year 1 we created pieces of artwork in the style of David Hockney.
Y6 have been analysing the work of Frank Green and John Culshaw. They then chose an artist to focus on and created their own painting.
Y6 held a class gallery today. They really enjoyed being art critics and left some fantastic feedback for their friends.
Y6 studied the proportions of their faces before drawing their self portraits. They then painted them in monochrome taking inspiration from John Culshaw.
Y6 have been fantastic during SATs week! They have worked and revised so hard! They even used their downtime to work together to create this beautiful owl 🦉
For our painting topic we are researching David Hockney and looking at some of his artwork and painting techniques.
We used the bust of Nefertiti as a stimulus for creating our own busts from clay.
Nursery have been enjoying taking part in autumn activities. The children finger painted autumn trees and created leaf print paintings. 🍂
In our art lessons we have been working on self portraits. It was a lot of fun and we worked very hard on them!
