Children's Art Week

Children’s Art Week takes place over three weeks from 29th June to 19th July. The celebration of the visual arts was a UK-wide programme run by Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education, with the aim of encouraging families and children to take part in creative activities that they may not have tried before. Although it is no longer officially run by Engage, lots of schools and communities will want to continue celebrating children's art during this time.

There is no longer an official theme, but you can access Engage's archived Children's Art Week resources here. As well as the archived resources on the Engage website, there are several Purple Mash activities you can use to inspire, entertain and educate your young learners.

Head over to the Art area of Purple Mash and you’ll find links to our five main art tools, a wide range of paint projects organised by topic, and a variety of writing projects based on famous artists and art movements.

Themes

Take a look at the resources we have on Purple Mash which support Engage's archived themes for previous Children's Art Weeks.

The Natural World:

To celebrate the natural world, we have so many resources on 2Paint that can be used. Can you draw a flower that has freshly bloomed? And now that Summer is well and truly on its way, why not paint a typical Summer scene and tell us all about what you would expect to see. Or you could even paint yourself a riverbank scene and the reflection that you would see.

Connecting Across Generations:

To explore the theme of connecting across generations why not try our Self Portrait 2Paint a Picture resource? You can use this to not only paint what you look like but what other members of your family look like. You can also paint a picture of your family including how many people there are and who they are!

Literacy and Creative Writing:

To ignite your creativity by looking at the theme of literacy and creative writing, why not explore some of your favourite books and paint a scene of them using 2Paint a Picture.

And why not paint what The Gruffalo looks like with terrible claws, and terrible tusks in its terrible jaws, and knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of its nose? Or there's Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack climbed to the top of the beanstalk, but what did he see? Explore children's ideas by asking them to draw what they think he laid his eyes on.

All of the Purple Mash resources mentioned require a subscription to access. If you don’t currently subscribe, you can try it for yourself with a free 14-day trial.

Whatever you get up to whilst celebrating Children’s Art Week, let us know on Twitter @2SimpleSoftware or @PurpleMash or on Facebook at 2SimpleUK. Happy Purple Mash-ing!