Madeleine Fox shows how your class can find out about light and dark while creating imaginative art collages…
Throughout history, people have created festivals and celebrations to help alleviate the winter darkness and build a sense of togetherness.
Festivals such as Diwali, Hannukah and Christmas use lights to brighten up the darkness, with candles, lanterns, bright colours, bonfires and fireworks burning brightly.
As well as having religious significance, celebrations like these help us cope with the gloom of the cold and darkness of long winter nights.
Light and dark art learning objectives
- Develop social communication, taking turns while working collaboratively
- Build a richer vocabulary
- Use observations to compose ideas orally ready for writing
- Use a range of materials creatively to share their ideas and imagination
Starter activity
Discuss darkness in the evenings once the clocks have changed – what can children see in the night?
Talk about the celebrations of Halloween and Bonfire Night. We make pumpkin lanterns with glowing lights, and watch fireworks that brighten up the night sky.
Explain that you’re going to explore light and dark. You’ll be looking at lots of different materials and thinking of vocabulary to describe what you see and feel, then setting up a sensory table.
Finally, you’ll imagine a night sky with stars and fireworks, while working together collaboratively to make big art collages.
Madeleine Fox is an educational writer and artist. She was a former primary and SEN teacher with a specialism in speech, language and communication difficulties and art.
