
Art
We are delighted to have achieved the Gold ArtsMark.
Here is some of the feedback from the ArtsMark assessors:
‘It is positive to read how, over the course of your Artsmark journey, you have successfully forged partnerships with approximately fifteen other providers, companies and artists who have either visited school or provided external workshops in art, drama, poetry, and music.’
‘ You have also worked hard to ensure that you represent the rich diversity of the community, seeking out opportunities such as inviting Yemeni poet and artist Amina Atiq to work with 60 children in year 4 to celebrate journeys from different countries.’
‘Pupils have had a range of authentic arts and cultural experiences, including animation workshops, gallery trips, author meet and greets and visits from artists to enhance their cultural opportunities’
‘Pupils created an art gallery at whole school events for families, had artwork on show in the Royal Liver Building and you have successfully built relationships with local establishments to showcase pupil’s artwork.’
At Smithdown Primary School, we believe art education stimulates creativity and imagination whilst giving the child unique opportunities to develop intellectually, emotionally, physically and socially. Here at Smithdown, we teach art as both an individual subject as well as incorporating it into other curriculum lessons. Below you will find an overview of what your child will be expected to learn in each of the Key Stages.
In Key Stage 1 the children will learn to use a range of different materials creatively to design and make products. They will draw, paint and sculpt materials such as clay to develop techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space. Children will use technology to produce images. They will also learn about the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers. All children will use a sketchbook to record ideas and observations.
In Key Stage 2 the children will learn to improve their mastery of art and design techniques by learning specific drawing, painting and sculpture techniques. They will experience using a wider range of materials. Children will use technology to produce images, patterns and decorative pieces of work. They will record their observations and ideas and use them to review and evaluate improvements. They will also learn about great artists, architects and designers in history.
Progression in art will be assessed through the pupils’ sketch books, which pass with the child to the next year group, displays and photographic evidence.
National Curriculum for Art and Design
Whole School Overview for Art 2024-2025
Art Chatter


Painting sunflowers
We enjoyed painting sunflowers as we watched our own sunflower seeds begin to grow. We shared a story called Camille and the Sunflowers and looked at a famous sunflower painting by Vincent Van Gogh to help us with our painting.


Ruth Wakefield – science week
For science week, we researched Ruth Wakefield. We learnt all about the temperatures needed and the variables that she changed. We then had a lesson in cookie making with our wonderful cook Monica and decorated the cookies with her face.

Creating a beanstalk
We created a beanstalk using green ribbon and paper. We imagined it was leading up to the giant’s castle.
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A new scientist to learn about for Y6
As part of our Science Week work, Year 6 learnt about Ibn Al-Haytham, the man credited with inventing the pinhole camera. As our Lowry portraits were so good, we couldn’t resist applying our artistic skills to this wonderful scientist too.
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Lowry murals
Some extremely proud artists of their work today, and why not, as it is absolutely STUNNING!
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Scientist Study – Alexander Miles
To begin our British Science Week activities, year 3 researched a new scientist. We discovered that Alexander Miles invented automatic elevator door in 1887. We completed a research activity on the IPads and created our own art piece of Alexander using art skills of continuing the picture and shading.
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World Book Day 2025 

Year 3 had a lovely day celebrating world book day. We read the story ‘101 Dalmatian’s’ and completed a book review on this. We also created our own dogs out of cups and black circles. In the afternoon, we learnt a new art skill in pointillism to paint our own Dalmatians.
All the costumes were amazing, thank you for yours efforts.

The Dalmatians are safe once again!
Today we had a visit from Cruella De Vil who wanted to steal all of the Dalmatian puppies, luckily the classes were able to find all 101 of them and saved the school! What an amazing World Book Day 2025.

World book day 

Today the children have had lots of fun dressing up as their favourite characters. We enjoyed learning all about the 101 Dalmatians and trying to find them around our school. We had lots of fun designing and decorating our own Dalmatian dogs with paint and cups!
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World Book Day
Year 6 have drawn their own versions of some books they have enjoyed reading for World Book Day.
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Heart Art
To accompany our learning about the circulatory system and the heart, we have produced some of our own artwork and posters linked to the topic.
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Visit from an artist
Year 3 had a great afternoon making their own recycled paper and adding their own designs to this.
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Y3 Sustainability Project with Metal
Y3 have been busy making their own paper out of pulp this morning with our visitors from Metal.

Getting creative with Supertato
We made some fantastic Supertato pictures using real potatoes to print with.
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The Man with the Red Eyes
We started our own versions today of one of Lowry’s most famous paintings.
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Art project
What an amazing start to our art project. The children created their very own paper and then decorated it. Next in our sustainability art project is to up cycle clothing. We can’t wait for the outcomes.
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Our designs for our 150 Year bunting are really coming along. We are going to stitch “TOGETHER WE GROW” along with some pictures that remind us of school.
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Mosaics! Mosaics! Mosaics!
We made a ceramic mosaic tile in groups using glass tesserae. Our designs are stunning!


Palaeolithic Stone Age
We made art that we would find in Palaeolithic caves. We worked together and made our caves walls as realistic as we could.
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More artwork in our Lowry unit
We are really getting to grips with sketching and painting in the style if L.S. Lowry. Please enjoy some more of our work.
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Lowry inspired scenes
We tried our hand at creating street scenes in the style of L.S.Lowry today.
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5JH Lion dance to celebrate the Lunar new year! 
We had an amazing afternoon in our lion dancing workshop. Happy Lunar New Year!

Art – mosaics
Year 4 designed their Roman inspired mosaics using technology before creating their own paper version.
We’re very excited to create our mosaics next week using tiles.
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Imagining we are cave people!
Today, year 3 mixed their history knowledge on the Palaeolithic cave people with their art skills by recreating cave art with charcoal. The children worked like our artist Laura McKendry and completed a group activity on the floor. This allowed them to work on a bigger scale and move around their work.

Palaeolithic Cave Art
We all collaborated to create cave art using charcoal. Combining art skills and history knowledge means amazing work!
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150 Years of Smithdown
We created some designs that we may use for our 150 year bunting. We will practise stitching so that we can attached our designs.
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Complimentary Colours
Yesterday we created artwork using a colour wheel to discover complimentary colours. We then created mosaic patterns inspired by Gaudi’s Trencadis technique. The media we used was oil pastel.

Who was Emmeline Pankhurst?
We have been finding out exactly this! Along with research and presentation, some of us sketched our own pictures of Emmeline too!
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Lowry figures part 2
After trying Lowry figures in perspective, we had a go today at sketching a group of figures.
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Charcoal
We all loved exploring charcoal, mark making and smudging on our page. We remembered lots of information about the artist we are studying as well – Laura McKendry.
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Ness the nurse
Our story this week is Ness the nurse. We have been painting pictures of her.
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Lowry figures
Today we had a try at sketching some figures in the style of Lowry. We think they are great for a first attempt.
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Pottery making
We had a lovely afternoon starting our pottery. We followed our designs to make an object (bowl, vase, cup) and etched some designs in. We are looking forward to painting in the next couple of weeks.

L.S. Lowry
Our first lesson in our new art unit of an artist study: L.S. Lowry. We are finding out about his instantly recognisable style and most famous paintings.
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Parent & carers craft afternoon
A wonderful afternoon with our fabulous parents and carers.

Christmas arts and crafts workshop
What a lovely afternoon! Thanks to all the parents that came and helped out with the winter crafts. They all looked amazing.


Parent assembly and activities Year 3
We had a lovely morning with our Hands assembly and our DT craft activities. Thank you to all our adults who turned up to support us.
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Calligraphy with the Arabic alphabet
Today in our art lesson we looked at different examples of Arabic calligraphy and have had a go at our own.

Christmas Twinkly Nativity
Reception and Nursery B have really worked hard to deliver a magnificent performance, full of wonder and magical singing in front of all our wonderful families this week. I would like to thank all of you for your support in taking the time to come and watch the children, as it really makes the difference to your child’s growth, as it builds their confidence. We loved learning all about the twinkly story, and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed performing it to you.


Some completed mosque sketches
We think some of these mosque pictures are incredible!We drew them as part of our RE unit which includes learning about ‘Ummah’ as part of the Islam religion.
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RE: The importance of the mosque in Islam.
We’re now in the Islam section of our RE unit and we are learning all about the sense of community and how the mosque plays an important part in bringing the community together. We took the opportunity to utilise our artistic skills too.
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Remembrance Day 2024
11:00 11.11.2024
Huge respect in our class to recognise the soldiers that have fallen in the past. We did a minute silence in the morning and then created amazing poppy art work based on our art topic ‘painting with scissors’ in the afternoon.
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Our leaf drawings using wax crayons and Brusho
We are really proud of our drawings. Our sketching skills have improved so much.
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Remembrance Day Poppy Art
After learning about Remembrance Day and importance of the symbol of the poppy, we had time to sketch our own poppies using pencil and oil crayons.
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Painting with scissors
We used our skills and techniques we have been practising by replicating how Henri Matisse created his art. We applied this method to our Ancient Egyptian topic in History.
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Diwali celebrations!!
Year 3 had a wonderful time learning all about the celebration of Diwali and how it is celebrated within the Hindu community. We had lots of fun using a variety of different coloured paints to make Diya lanterns. We looked at and talked about different rangoli patterns and made our own ones. We have lots of amazing artists in our class!

Diwali lanterns
We are having so much fun making our Diwali lanterns with rangoli patterns.

Diwali Celebrations
Today, year 3 had a workshop based around Diwali. The children enjoyed learning about this celebration. They learned how it called ‘the festival of lights’ and created their own pieces of art that candle lights are placed in. We got to dress up and took part in a traditional Diwali dance.
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Diwali celebrations
Today Year 3 looked at the celebration of Diwali and enjoyed watching how it is celebrated. We enjoyed looking at the different activities and looking at how the Rangoli designs are made!
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Diwali lanterns
Today we are designing our Diwali lanterns for next week. We have learnt the story of Rama and Sita and thought about why Diwali is celebrated in Hindu religion. We are trying to focus on using Rangoli patterns.


Oil pastel artists!
Today we having been using different oil pastel techniques (sgraffito, dry blending, cross-hatching and tinting) to figure out which ones we want to use for our landscapes.

What is a colour wheel? 
We had so much fun painting our colour wheels and understanding how different colours are made. We discussed primary and secondary colours.

Sunrise Sunset
We are loving how are paintings are starting to look and how each piece has its own artist’s interpretation.Thank you Claude Monet for the inspiration through our ‘Impressionism’ unit.
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Observational Drawing
2GH have created some wonderful observational drawings of our leaves today! Check out the details in these images! Good job Year 2!
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Art and Nature!
Year 2 have made their own pictures out of natural materials that we have collected.
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Applying Painting with Scissors
Year 3 had a great afternoon applying their painting with scissors skills to some Ancient Egyptian paintings. We discussed the pictures and what we could see, using our art vocabulary. We then had the challenge of focusing on a small part of these images and then had to recreate this.
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Year 5 Art Adventure: Exploring Perspectives! 

Today in Year 5, our budding artists dived into the fascinating world of one-point perspective and atmospheric perspective! They transformed ordinary views into extraordinary landscapes, learning how to create depth and dimension in their artwork.
With guidance our students experimented with lines and shading, making their drawings come alive. The focus on perspective not only enhances their artistic skills but also encourages critical thinking and creativity.
Join us in celebrating their hard work and skill!
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Impressionist Sunrises Part 2
We are painting the next painting in our series of impressionist sunrises / sunsets. Using Claude Monet’s work as our inspiration, we will soon have our own two set collection of sunrise themed paintings.
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Year 4 Still Life
Year 4 had a wonderful afternoon exploring traditional and contemporary still life artwork. They produced gestural drawings for a piece of artwork by Giorgi Morandi.

Impression: researching a painting
We have started our journey into Impressionism and after noting our observations, we are now researching one particular painting.
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Black History Month ‘24
Some AMAZING entries for the Merseyside Police competition! Children have worked hard creating lovely pieces of work with great messages as well. Well done to everyone who has submitted already. Last day tomorrow (Friday 13th September).
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Painting with scissors
We used Henri Matisse as our inspiration for our art topic. We used his method of painting with scissors to make our collages.
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Our final musical instrument designs
Take a look at some of the fantastic musical instruments we have made in our Art lessons this term.
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Greek Pottery
We are starting to learn about all the different styles, colours, shapes and uses of Ancient Greek pottery here in Y6.
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Volcanoes Eruptions!
We had an amazing afternoon erupting our volcanoes! We even had a very dangerous and violent composite volcano with thick magma which increased the pressure when erupting.
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Eid Mubarak!
Happy Eid to all our families celebrating! We had a lovely day and week celebrating with all our children and adults.
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Trip to the beach!
Year 3 had a lovely day at New Brighton! We collected a range of natural materials from the woods and the beach, and used these to create a painting of the seaside. I think everyone’s favourite part was playing in the sand!!!!

Year 3 natural resources!
What a week we have had! Year 3 had a lovely trip to New Brighton to find natural resources so that we could create landscapes in the theme of Frances Hatch. We glued on things we found and used water to extract the pigment out of them to colour paper.
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Liverpool Skyline
Here is a FABULOUS finished skyline picture to accompany our Geography work on our ‘Walking Tours Around Liverpool.’ Amazing work from this young artist.
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Celebrating one of our Y6 artists
Look at the incredible sketch one extremely talented member of Year 6 has drawn!
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Watercolour Skylines
We have started our watercolour skylines to link with our Walking Tour of Liverpool which we wrote in Geography.
not finished yet, but they’re looking good already.

Primal Painting
Year 3 used the pigment from different foods and natural resources to paint and mark make.


Bell Beaker Pottery
Super work creating our Bronze Age Bell Beaker pots. We created a similar shape and added patterns to them.

Cyanotype Art
Year 3 used a very old way of producing photographs without a camera. We used light sensitive paper to create a cyanotype capture. The children created their designs using natural resources found around schools – similar to Anna Atkins.
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Cyanotype!
Year 3 had a wonderful afternoon creating cyanotype art pieces, influenced by the Artist we are currently exploring, Anna Atkins. The children collected a range of natural materials, placed them on Cyanotype paper, let it sit in the sun for 10 minutes, removed the design and rinsed the paper.
Don’t they look amazing!!!

Designing our own maps to add OS symbols.
In Geography, we have been designing our very own islands. When completed, they will show OS symbols and we will locate places using 6 figure grid references.
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We looked at another artist who focused on natural materials. Anna Atkins used cyanotype to create one of the first books entirely of photographs. This was done with seaweed and without a camera! We used water colours to replicate the colours gain from the process.

We started our new Art topic, which focuses on natural materials. We used sand and soil to mark make just as Frances Hatch does.

We had an amazing day on world book day! We focused on #Goldilocks and created our own poems and naughty hashtags.


Our Lowry Gallery
We are so proud of the work our Year 6 have produced within our Lowry unit. Displays everywhere!
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Y6 Lowry Museum Trip
Since we have been studying L.S. Lowry, we took a trip to The Lowry Museum in Salford and took part in a portrait workshop after viewing some of Lowry’s famous paintings. We had such a fabulous day!
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Chinese New Year celebrations
To celebrate the new lunar year, we have been getting crafty in class making representations of dragons using a variety of resources. Look at our fabulous dragons! We also made our own lanterns after learning about the significance of the colour red.
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Expressive Collages! Titanic Art
We worked hard in art today to make expressive collages of the Titanic.
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Painting – Impasto!
2GH have been painting using primary colours. We made sure that the paint was thick so that we could move it around the page and created our own ‘impasto’ techniques.
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Lowry perspective paintings
Following on from our characters, we had a go at one point perspective street scenes in the style of L.S. Lowry.
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Matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs …
We have been sketching figures in the style of L.S. Lowry.
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RE: Geometric Patterns
After learning about Mosques, we followed step by step instructions to create our own geometric Islamic patterns. Now they are designed, we are going to colour. How symmetrical can we make them? ?
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We have combined our knowledge of Palaeolithic cave art with skills and techniques acquired from Laura McKendry.


Hansel and Gretel Mural
A group of our artists are currently working on a mural displaying scenes from Hansel and Gretel, a story we read and worked with last term. Everything has been lightly sketched on and now the girls are applying the colour. We can’t wait to see the finished piece!
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The Wizard of Oz – our ticket designs.
We thought some of our ticket designs were just far too lovely not to share!
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WWII Liverpool Skyline ‘The Blitz’ Scenes
We created our own versions of the Liverpool skyline one night during The Blitz in World War Two.
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Hot air balloons
We are learning all about different types of transport. We have been making our own hot air balloons using different materials and decorating them.
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Today we have read I Like Trains!
We have printed trains with blocks and made marks to represent train track, trains and signals.
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Impressionism
We were so blown away by this painting that we simply had to frame it! What a wonderful interpretation of Claude Monet’s ‘The Poppy Field’ by a very talented Year 6 artist ??
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Diwali Lanterns
As part of our Diwali celebrations, Year 6 made lanterns displaying the symbols of, not only Hinduism, but other religions of the world too.
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Year 2 have made remembrance poppies today
2GH made some beautiful poppies to help us remember today.
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Remembrance Day
For Remembrance Day, we read the poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ and after discussing the content, we embellished the poem with images of poppies.
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Remembrance Day
We have created some beautiful poems after reading Flanders Fields and used watercolours/charcoal/pencils to create some poppy artwork to mark Remembrance Day.
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Using Henri Matisse’s style, painting with scissors, Year 3 created poppies to show their respect for all the people who have lost their lives and our thoughts for their families.

Replication process of ‘Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge’ by Claude Monet
Stage 1 in our replication process of ‘Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge’ by Claude Monet – colour mixing. Impressionism for #smithdownart
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This afternoon 5EHD have been looking at different watercolour techniques…
This afternoon 5EHD have been looking at different watercolour techniques ahead of using them as part of a mixed media piece. #smithdownart ?
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We’ve made such a lovely start to our new mixed media landscapes art topic!
We’ve made such a lovely start to our new mixed media landscapes art topic! #smithdownart
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4KM had an amazing art lesson creating their own mood boards…
4KM had an amazing art lesson creating their own mood boards using different colours for positive and negative emotions. The children also discovered how they can portray a mood in still life drawings? #smithdownart
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4KM had a great art lesson this afternoon?
4KM had a great art lesson this afternoon? the children started off by exploring the texture of their shoes and then explored textures in still life art work? #smithdownart
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4KM had a great afternoon creating their own still life artwork!!
4KM had a great afternoon creating their own still life artwork!! The children used a lot of different techniques to create their artwork???? #smithdownart
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The children explored his life and paintings ?
4KM had a great afternoon completing their artist study about Paul Cezanne. The children explored his life and paintings ? #Smithdownart
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Super start to our “Painting with Scissors” topic with a focus on Henri Matisse
Super start to our “Painting with Scissors” topic with a focus on Henri Matisse. Amazing inspiration applied to their own work? great work Year 3! #smithdownart #theartsatsmithdown

Artwork inspired by Yinka Shonibare
Look at this amazing artwork inspired by Yinka Shonibare #smithdownart
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Making some spirals out of play dough!?
After looking at spirals in art, these superstars decided to make some spirals out of play dough!?
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We have been learning to draw spirals
We have been learning to draw spirals. This superstar made a spiral using the Lego #smithdownart
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Before starting our new Art topic ‘Spirals’…
Before starting our new Art topic ‘Spirals’ – we had a quick practise drawing them on the playground with chalk. What do you think? Are we ready to start creating them in lots of different ways? #smithdownart
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Year 2 have been reading ’The Beautiful Oops’…
Year 2 have been reading ’The Beautiful Oops’ and thinking about how we can celebrate our mistakes and turn them into something special. #smithdownart @SmithdownPrimY2
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