Expressive Arts & Design

In Early Years, the children have plenty of opportunity to practise the specific area of development – Expressive Arts and Design. Every day the children will have time in the day to explore the art area, where there will be independent activities provided there to practise expressing themselves through media and materials that are related to the topic. We encourage the children to be proud of their art work and love to display it on our topic walls.

Throughout the year the children will learn how to use a range of different medias such as paint, chalk, watercolours, plasticine, oil pastels and many more. We teach the children the skills of how to use the different medias and then allow them to explore them independently and begin to develop their own preferences.

The children will also have many opportunities to take part in design projects throughout the year such as – making their own clay hedgehogs and nests, making their own musical instrument, designing and making their own Christmas decoration, designing and making a moving vehicle and many food projects for cooking and baking skills.

We also love singing and dancing in Early Years! For each topic we cover, we have many associated songs and rhymes we learn alongside the topic. The children love these and we actively encourage the children to express themselves through song! The children also have weekly music lessons which include exploring musical instruments and learning about how to change the tempo and pitch of sounds.

In PE the children have a full term on dance and love exploring how to move their bodies to music. We teach the children how to express themselves to music and how to change the speed of their movements to match the music. We also teach them how to join a sequence of movements together to make a dance and encourage them to practise this in the environment and to enjoy making dances up with their friends.

A vital part of our Early Years provision is role play, we encourage role play indoors and outdoors. Each classroom has a role play area that allows the children to use their imagination to be whoever they want to be! We find the children work great as a team in these areas and using their imagination to make props and roles up, really promotes fantastic language and vocabulary!