Expressive Art and Design Curriculum

Hungerford Nursery School Centre for Children and Families

Everyone Matters – Be the Best you can be –

 All Learn: All Lead: All Achieve

Expressive Art and Design Curriculum

The EYFS 2021 states that the educational programmes must involve activities and experiences for children as set out under the area of learning:

"The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity. It is important that children have regular opportunities to engage with the arts, enabling them to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials. The quality and variety of what children see, hear and participate in is crucial for developing their understanding, self-expression, vocabulary and ability to communicate through the arts. The frequency, repetition and depth of their experiences are fundamental to their progress in interpreting and appreciating what they hear, respond to and observe."

Intent of Expressive Arts and Design Curriculum

We aim to ensure that children are able to represent their ideas through a range of media. Our purpose is to stimulate children to explore and share their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of art, design, technology, music, drama, movement, dance and imaginative play activities. We encourage children to be able to paint, draw, collage, model using clay and other materials and use basic musical instruments.  We promote children to learn new songs and rhymes and enjoy singing them with each other. We intend to give children confidence to explore, where they have to solve problems, investigate, make decisions, design and experiment. We aspire to children being able to act out their own stories using helicopter stories.  At various times during the year children are given the opportunity to participate in celebrations where they can use their singing and acting.

Implementation of Expressive Art and Design curriculum

• We follow children’s interests and support the exploration through resources and conversation. Offering an environment that is enquiry-led by their interests and natural curiosity
• We provide active learning environments where children can explore a range of expressive  arts and design exploring a range of materials like clay, model making and woodwork
• We provide a range of stimulating resources and shape the learning environment to enhance real life opportunities for developing skills in being imaginative and exploring materials and media
• Staff/child interaction is used to extend children’s learning and enhance sustained shared thinking
• In every area of the nursery, throughout the day staff use a range of questions including open-ended questions to encourage children to share their ideas, explain their thinking, describe things around them and make reasoned evaluations
• Our staff plan for and respond to the child’s individual next steps in the moment and during weekly planning
• There are carefully selected appropriate resources for all our workshops in relation to Expressive Arts and Design that challenge, provoke and stimulate their development. We provide a wide range, including a range of musical instruments, books, role play items and dressing up, paint, resources that support children taking on a role etc