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Important

This page is based on the draft Year 2 content for the Arts, which is currently open for feedback. Schools are not required to implement changes until the consultation process is confirmed.

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Consultation for Year 0 to 10 draft curriculum content

In Years 1 to 3, children explore the Arts as they learn simple concepts and techniques and discover how elements like colour, rhythm and movement express ideas. They engage with art forms from New Zealand and around the world through playful, hands-on experiences.

In this phase, arts teaching is structured around 3 strands that focus on key areas of learning. These include:

  • Performing Arts: making and creating, observing and responding
  • Music: elements of music, listening and responding, performing, including singing, playing instruments, and creating and composing
  • Visual Arts: making and creating, observing and responding.

Performing Arts#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • talk about and explore emotions through:
    • reading stories together, and as you read, talk about how you can tell if a character is happy or sad, looking for clues in the pictures and imagining what the character might be feeling
    • playing with toys or puppets
    • playing simple games, like charades or Simon Says.
  • watch live or recorded performances of various dance styles or drama moments such as a television programme that depicts real life, or a fantasy or a melodrama where there are heroes and villains and talk about what you notice
  • play games where you use your body to show different people, animals, places, or objects, for example:
    • How could you turn your body into a snail?
    • How could you use your body to be as tall as a waharoa?
    • Can you fly like a kea?

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on how meaning can be expressed and interpreted through movement and performance.

For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • use their body, face, and voice to show different characters or feelings, tell a story, and respond to music
  • demonstrate the difference between:
    • locomotive (or ‘travelling’) movement, like crawling or jumping, where they move around a space
    • non-locomotive movement, like stretching or bending, where they stay in one place
  • create simple sequences of movement with different:
    • levels: the height at which a performer moves, which may be high, medium, or low
    • pathways: patterns a performer creates in the air or on the floor by moving parts of their body through space
  • use simple movements, sounds, and rhythms from global or local influences such as te ao Māori to tell stories, express feelings, and show connections with people and places, for example, moving like the local awa
  • notice and talk about how other people use movement, voice, space, and gestures in a performance
  • share their thoughts and feelings about a performance they have seen or in which they have taken part.

Music#

Ideas to help at home

With your child, you could:

  • sing simple songs and waiata, chant spoken rhymes, and:
    • notice how different it feels to sing or to speak
    • repeat favourites and learn new ones
    • practise the correct pronunciation of te reo Māori in waiata
  • explore new and familiar music and songs by:
    • sharing music with family and friends
    • singing lullabies at bedtime
    • asking someone to teach a childhood song, singing it phrase by phrase so everyone else can listen and copy
    • making a playlist together, including many styles of music
  • pretend to be a conductor while listening to instrumental music played by an orchestra
  • make percussion instruments from everyday objects, like an ice cream container drum or a bottle shaker, and use them to create a musical accompaniment to a song.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on how meaning can be understood and expressed through sound. For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • tap or clap to the beat of a piece of music where the beat is grouped in 2s or 3s
  • notice and talk about the effect of changes in:
    • tempo: speed
    • dynamics: volume, “crescendo” when getting louder and “diminuendo” when getting quieter
    • pitch: how high or low it sounds
  • share music and talk about its purpose, for example, a national anthem or welcoming waiata
  • explore the sounds they can make with musical instruments and other objects
  • use drawings and simple words to describe music and how it makes them feel
  • understand the role of a conductor and a composer
  • play and create simple songs and rhythms using their bodies and percussion instruments
  • sing with others, clearly, in time, and with changes in volume and pitch.

Visual Arts#

Ideas to help learning at home

With your child, you could:

  • explore how found objects, like sticks, stones, and shells, can be used to create known shapes, objects, scenes and patterns
  • work alongside each other to make art and talk about and model (demonstrate) the creative process, for example:
    • being calm about making a mistake
    • exploring art media, like salt dough (flour, salt, water), air dry clay or felt pens, freely and without an ‘end goal’
    • talking positively about your own skills
  • play a favourite piece of music and draw freely together in response as you listen, then look at your drawings and talk about how the music influenced them
  • provide time and space to explore art-making materials you have in your space, including:
    • 2-dimensional materials like paint, pastels, chalk, or dyes such as food colouring, including cold coffee or tea, beetroot, raspberries, or mud
    • three-dimensional materials like salt dough (flour, salt, water), air dry clay or card (that can be folded), dried pasta, leaves, stones, bottle caps or buttons.
  • make a space in your home to display and celebrate artworks made by your whānau.

What the teacher will focus on#

The teacher will focus on how meaning can be explored and communicated through the creation of visual art.

For example, by the end of the year, your child may be able to:

  • recognise and explore the basic elements of visual art, for example:
    • line: using lines to suggest a shape, movement or emotion
    • shape: joining a line or using colour or texture to make a regular, geometric shape, like a triangle, or a less regular, more organic shape, like a leaf
    • colour: using colour to create a mood or feeling, for example, red for anger
    • texture: changing how something looks and feels by experimenting with different materials and techniques, for example, making it look rough or smooth
    • mark making: creating lines, dots, patterns, or textures with different tools and materials
  • experiment with using different materials, tools, and techniques to draw, paint, and make simple sculptures
  • create patterns, using colours, symbols, and shapes to represent important people, places or things
  • talk about what they think, feel or notice about their own or other people’s artwork.