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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Key Stage 1 art explained

Girl painting
Do you want to support your budding artist? You can with these lesson examples and top tips for enjoying art together at home.

In art lessons in KS1, your child will learn:

  • to use a range of materials creatively to design and make products
  • to use drawing, painting and sculpture to develop and share their ideas, experiences and imagination
  • to develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space
  • about the work of a range of artists, craft makers and designers, describing the differences and similarities between different practices and disciplines, and making links to their own work.

KS1 art lesson examples

Here are the kinds of lessons children will experience at school:

  • Year 1 children experiment with a variety of papers and fabrics to create different effects, like folding, scrunching, tearing, cutting, deconstructing, pleating and joining. They colour their designs with dyes made from beetroot, brown and red onion skin and blackberries.
     
  • Year 1 children bring in pictures of themselves for a project on self-portraits. After discussing the pictures, the children investigate a range of drawing media and marks they can make to show, for example, textures of hair or pattern on clothing. They explore how marks can help communicate ideas about themselves and how they would like to be seen by others (for example, big and bold, quiet and thoughtful).
     
  • A Year 2 class is taught how artists create storyboards to show the sequence of events in a story. They then create their own frame-by-frame illustrations to tell the story of an event from their lives or favourite television programme.

Nurturing artistic talent at home

  • Visit local art and craft events, such as exhibitions and workshops to build an early appreciation for paintings, ceramics, textiles and other art and design objects.
     
  • When looking at artefacts, buildings and designs, ask your child questions similar to those they'll ask in class, such as “What do you like best about this?”, “Why do you think it's this colour / has this particular feature?”, and “What is it made from?”
     
  • Encourage your child's creative curiosity through cutting, tearing and sticking stuff. Invest in simple art and craft books and kits and help your child to collect art materials – recycled paper, fabric, empty containers and resources such as glue, tape and paints. They could keep them all in their own special art and craft box, which they can personalise with their own design.