Printmaking (KS1 – KS2)

KS1 KS2 Art

Printmaking is the strand where children discover they can make the same image again and again, and that the process itself changes what the image looks like. From simple block printing to lino and monoprint, here’s what the curriculum expects.

What children learn about printmaking at KS1 and KS2

What the national curriculum expects

Printmaking isn’t named individually in the National Curriculum. It sits within the requirement at KS1 to use a range of materials creatively and develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space, and within the KS2 requirement to improve mastery of art and design techniques with a range of materials. Printmaking is one of the most common ways schools meet both, particularly for pattern and repetition.

Key knowledge and concepts

Within this topic, children build printmaking skills that develop year on year:

Making an image that can be repeated

Printing with found objects, sponges and shapes

Cutting or building a surface to print from

Making a single print, and what makes it distinctive

Cutting lino safely, and printing from it

Building pattern through repetition and rotation

Printing in more than one colour

Artists and designers known for printed work

Where this topic sits within KS1 and KS2

Printmaking isn’t a single unit taught once. It runs across both key stages as one of the techniques through which the curriculum’s requirements are met, developing from simple block printing at KS1 towards lino and layered colour at KS2.

How to access this topic

Printmaking doesn’t sit on its own in the curriculum. The Cornerstones art and design curriculum is fully sequenced from EYFS through Year 1 to Year 6, so you can see what comes before, what follows and how the whole picture fits together. We’ve done the thinking, so your planning time goes into teaching, not sequencing.

Find out more about the curriculum

Explore the Art and Design Curriculum

Quick Teach Individual lessons and resources for supplementing what you already teach.