Autumn – Textiles/Fastenings

Building upon their sewing skills from previous years, this topic sees the children designing and creating a book sleeve; exploring a variety of fastenings and selecting the most appropriate one for their design. Pupils have greater creative freedom at every stage of the project.

• Evaluating fastenings – Before starting their project, children explore different fastenings around them and consider their advantages and disadvantages.
• Designing my book sleeve – Pupils devise their own specific design criteria, select a style of book sleeve and finally draw their design on paper.
• Paper mock-up and preparing fabric – To ensure their design will work, pupils create a paper mock-up before using this as a template to cut out their fabric.
• Assembling my book sleeve – After sewing together their fabric, pupils attach their fastenings and decorate their book sleeves in accordance with their design criteria.

Formal Elements of Art: Texture and pattern

Exploring two of the formal elements of art: texture and pattern; pupils develop a range of mark-making techniques, make and use their own textured stamps for printing; draw a ‘flip’ pattern and recreate a famous and ancient geometric pattern.

• Texture: charcoal mark making – After experimenting with the different marks that charcoal can make, children are challenged to represent the meaning of a given list of words and phrases, in an abstract way.
• Texture and pattern: printing – Children imprint texture and pattern into a piece of playdough using a selection of clay tools and everyday objects, then create prints from their blocks by applying ink to the surface and placing a piece of paper on.
• Stamp printing – Drawing around geometric shapes onto polystyrene foam and securing to a cork or lego brick, children make a stamp to create repeating patterns, varying configurations and their use of colour.
• Reflection and symmetry  – Children draw an image and then select a small section to trace into one square of a quadrant, they continue flipping and tracing into the next square of the quadrant until the ‘flip pattern’ is complete.
• Pattern: Flower of life – Using a compass and following precise instructions, children make an image of overlapping and interconnected circles to recreate the sacred geometric symbol, ‘the flower of life’

Spring – Electrical Systems/Torches

In this topic, children apply their scientific understanding of electrical circuits to create a torch made from easily available materials and objects. They will also design and evaluate their product against set design criteria.

• Electrical Products – Pupils explore the difference between electrical and electronic as well as revisiting how to create a simple circuit.
• Evaluating torches – Pupils evaluate a range of different torches and identify the features of a torch: housing, reflector, circuit and switch.
• Torch design – Using their understanding from the previous lessons, pupils create a design for their torches incorporating the features they have identified.
• Torch assembly – Closely following their designs, children build the circuit and the housing for their torches in the final lesson of the topic.

Every picture tells a story: Analysing famous artists’ work

The idea behind this topic is to develop children’s ability to analyse, unpick and understand works of art, using inference to suggest what different subjects may be thinking or feeling and predicting what might be happening in a scene and would could happen next. They also have the opportunity to create their own photo collages and abstract art inspired by the work explored.

• My Parents – Children analyse David Hockney’s, ‘My Parents’, describing the piece, including the formal elements (shape, form, tone, texture, pattern, colour) to someone who can’t see the painting before acting out the scene within it.
• The Dance – Unpicking and analysing Paula Rego’s ‘The Dance’ and discussing the formal elements of the piece, children learn to justify their opinion by referencing specific aspects of the painting.
• Table for Ladies – To help understand the story behind this Edward Hopper painting, children create a role-play to view the work from another perspective.
• Children’s Games – Pupils explore Brueghel’s painting, ‘Children’s Games’ before recreating it as a photo collage, but with a modern twist.
• Fiona Rae – Developing their understanding of abstract art, children discuss the story behind Fiona Rae’s work and create their own piece to represent the same themes.

Summer – Food/Adapting a recipe 

Children work in groups to adapt a simple biscuit recipe, to create the tastiest biscuit. While making they will also ensure that their creation comes within the given budget of overheads and costs of ingredients.

• Following a recipe – After sampling and evaluating a range of biscuits, children bake a simple biscuit recipe.
• Testing ingredients – Children work in groups to make the biscuit recipe from Lesson 1, then divide the mixture between them, with each adding a different ingredient to their dough to discover which tastes best when baked.
• Final design and budget – Working to a budget which includes the imaginary cost of building hire, utilities, packaging and the basic biscuit recipe, children decide which ingredients they will spend the rest of their budget on for their biscuits.
• Biscuit bake off – It’s the ‘Bake Off’ – after making a batch of their final adapted biscuit design and packaging, a panel of judges taste and review each group’s creations.

Sculpture: Working with recycled materials

In this topic, children’s work is influenced by a range of inspirational sculptors as they explore and use unusual objects to create their own 3D works of art. As well as having the opportunity to create drums and maracas from recycled materials, pupils also look at different techniques, such as wax resist and collages to create different effects.

• Making maracas – Using Stomp as inspiration, children create maracas using plastic bottles and decorate with West African patterns.
• Making drums – In this lesson, pupils recycle metal tins, turning them into drums and use wax resist techniques to decorate them in original ways.
• Acrimboldo – Inspired by the work of Archimboldo and using the idea of turning other objects into something new, pupils create a fruity face collage.
• Sokari Douglas Camp – Exploring the work of this talented sculptor, pupils use themselves as an active part of their own sculptures.
• El Anatsui – Drawing once more on the idea of recycled materials, pupils look at the beautiful work of El Anatsui, using the same themes to create their own sculpture.