This lesson explains why gas masks were used during World War 2, including video clips from the 1930s reminding people to carry their masks with them at all times and to practise wearing them once a week. The lesson brainstorms what they were made from and their effectiveness, before comparing adult and child gas masks. The lesson objective is for children to make a gas mask using given materials, considering comfort, effectiveness to keep out gas, and appeal for children to wear them. There are lots more WWII resources in my shop too if you want to link further lessons. Enjoy!

A brief lesson showing art created by Henry Moore, using sketches to bring some of the events of the war to life.

I made and taught these Art lessons alongside our class Victorians topic, helping children to understand why silhouette artwork became popular in the Victorian period, how silhouettes are made and identifying everyday objects by their silhouettes. The first lesson is an introduction, as described above. The task gets children to match images of everyday objects with its silhouette. The second lesson gets children to work in small groups to sketch their portrait silhouette outlines using torches and pencils. The third lesson brings a modern twist to the portrait silhouette, by getting children to fill their portrait not with solid black, but with drawings and colour linked to their own personality (which could be linked to Mindfulness in PHSE). UPDATE 27/03/2019 Presentation now available in Powerpoint format.

These two lessons introduce what charcoal is (i.e. where it comes from), why it became a popular art form during the Victorian period and the techniques to sketching using charcoal.

I made this lesson to introduce to my Year 3 class what etching was and why it was used as an art form by the Victorians. It includes a definition, picture examples and a video link. My lesson task was to design a print (on paper) that they wanted to etch the following week.

In this Art lesson, children compare different portrait artists by studying 6 examples (each with the artist given) and then using the internet to research the date that the portrait was completed and who it is a portrait of. As an extension, they can also describe the use of colour in each portrait to compare the different examples. Artists to be studied include; Yousuf Karsh, John Singer Sargant, David Hockney, Picasso, Da Vinci and Rembrandt.

As part of the children's cross-curricular studies about the Black Death, I linked my Art by learning about Masks. The class had previously studied the Egyptians, so this linked well with their knowledge from that. This is a simple presentation which will allow you as a class to discuss what masks are, who wears them and why, and to compare different examples from cultures around the world. I haven't included a specific activity, but from this we went on compare/contrast the examples, and then over future lessons focus specifically on Death Masks before the class designed and made their own. Can easily be adapted for a different topic which features masks!

Two lessons worth of worksheets, getting children to study examples of Ancient Greek clothing, before going on to design their own Ancient Greek top (which in my class we made using cheap white t-shirts!)

Are your class studying the Ancient Greeks? Here's a lesson activity, focusing on Ancient Greek architecture, which gets children to research various facts about different buildings (e.g. stadiums, housing). This would be a great cross-curricular activity, as children could use ICT to research the answers. Worksheet could be completed in pairs, or for a shorter lesson, different groups could each focus on a particular architecture type.

This task, linked to Ancient Greek topic work, gets children to study different examples of Ancient Greek pottery, before they design their own pot shape outline in their books. They would then use this as a plan for when they make their pot from clay, following the instructions on the sheet.

Going to a museum to as part of your Ancient Greeks topic? Here is a simple, print-friendly worksheet that I've used many times (at places like the British Museum) for children to pick and sketch their favourite artefact.