Key Stage 1 art and design · Art and design techniques

KS1 art: using form and space, a guide for parents

In art, form means a solid, three-dimensional shape that you could pick up or walk around, and space means the room around, between and inside things. In Years 1 and 2 children explore both by modelling with soft materials, building with card and boxes, and looking at how objects can be placed to look near or far in a drawing or painting. It sits alongside colour, line, pattern and texture as one of the basic ingredients of art.

Using form and space, explained

A shape is flat. If you draw round a plate on paper you get a circle. A form is solid: the plate itself, a ball, a pebble or a cardboard box. Teachers use the word “form” so children learn to notice that sculpture is made of things with a front, a back, a top and sides. Children look at balls, boxes, tubes and stones, name them, and then make their own forms by rolling, pinching, squeezing, flattening, stacking and joining soft materials such as clay or modelling dough.

Space is the part people often forget. A sculpture takes up space, but it also has space around it, between its parts and sometimes right through it, like the hole in a doughnut or the gap between an animal’s legs. Children are encouraged to walk around what they make, look at it from the front, side and back, and notice that it changes. A model with a gap or a hole in it is a good example of using space deliberately, not just filling it up.

Form and space also come into drawing and painting. Young children often draw everything standing on a line at the bottom of the page, all about the same size. By Year 2 many are ready to try showing that some things are nearer and some further away. Three simple ideas help: nearer things can overlap the ones behind, nearer things are usually drawn bigger, and things further away can sit higher up the page. Teachers tend to introduce these through a hands-on activity, such as arranging three toys on a table and drawing what the child sees.

The National Curriculum asks for a wide range of techniques in colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space, and aims for children to become proficient in drawing, painting and sculpture. At this age that means handling tools and materials with growing control and talking about what they have made, not producing realistic results. Which materials and projects a school uses is its own choice: some make clay animals, some build junk models from recycled boxes, and some make landscapes with layers of paper.

Words your child will hear

Form: A solid, three-dimensional shape such as a ball, a box or a sculpture.
Shape: A flat outline, such as a circle, square or triangle.
Three-dimensional (3D): Having height, width and depth, so you can hold it or walk around it.
Sculpture: A piece of art made as a solid form, by modelling, carving or building.
Space: The area around, between and inside the things in a piece of art.
Overlap: When one thing partly covers another, which makes the covered thing look further away.
Foreground and background: The part of a picture that looks nearest to you, and the part that looks furthest away.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 1 says:

Pupils should be taught to develop a wide range of art and design techniques in using colour, pattern, texture, line, shape, form and space
Aim: pupils become proficient in drawing, painting, sculpture and other art, craft and design techniques.

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Try it: modelling a creature from a lump of clay

Make a standing creature from one lump of clay or modelling dough, and make it work from every side.

Start with a lump about the size of a tennis ball and roll it between your palms into a ball. A ball is a solid round form, not a flat circle. Squeeze one side a little to make it more like an egg for the body.
Pull out a head from one end of the body, or roll a smaller ball and press it on firmly. Pinch two ears out of the head. Turn the model round and look at it from the side. Does the head look right from there too, or is it only a front view?
Roll four short sausages for legs. Press each one onto the body, then smooth the join with a finger so it won’t snap off. Stand the creature up and check that it balances.
Now use space on purpose. Curl the tail up so there is a gap between it and the body, and leave a clear space between the legs. Push a thumb or a pencil end through the body to make a hole for a tunnel or a belly button. Walk round it and notice how the gaps change as you move.
Describe it in your own words: which parts are rounded, which are flat, where are the gaps, and which view do you like best?

A good model is a solid form that stands up, looks like a creature from the front, the side and the back, and has at least one gap or hole. A child might say: “My creature is a form because you can hold it. I made the body round and the legs long. The space between the legs lets you see right through.”

Common mistakes and how to help

Thinking shape and form are the same thing

In everyday talk a ball is “a circle” and a box is “a square”, and early drawings show them that way, so children don’t yet see why a second word is needed.

What helps: Put a ball in one hand and a drawn circle on paper in the other. One can be rolled and held and one can’t. Ask “Which one is a form?” and let your child explain the difference in their own words.

Believing the empty space around things doesn’t count

Children focus on the object they are making and see the gaps as nothing, so models are often solid lumps with no holes or gaps.

What helps: Point out spaces in everyday things: the hole in a ring, the gap under a chair, the inside of a cup. Then ask your child to make a model with a hole through it, or one that someone could look through.

Drawing everything in a row on a line at the bottom, all the same size

This is a very normal stage. Children draw what they know about things rather than how they look from where they are sitting, and a ground line is a tidy way to organise a page.

What helps: Set three toys at different distances and ask which is nearest. Try drawing the nearest one first and letting it cover part of the next. Moving the far one a little higher up the page often feels like a discovery.

Pressing pieces together and being upset when they fall off

Clay and dough need a firm join. A leg stuck on loosely looks fine for a minute and then drops off, which feels like failure.

What helps: Show how to press the pieces together firmly and smooth the join so it blends in, or to pull a leg out of the body itself. Making the body slightly thicker also helps. Treat a fall as information about what to try next.

How to help at home

Squash, roll and pinch. Give your child modelling dough or a bowl of homemade dough, made with flour, salt and water and not cooked, and ask for an animal that can stand up. Talk about the shapes they roll and the places they pinch. Salt dough is very salty, so supervise so none of it goes in mouths, and keep it away from pets.
Hunt for forms. Find solid things around the house or in the park: a tin, a pebble, a tube from a kitchen roll, a conker. Which can roll? Which can stack? Then compare each with a flat drawing of it.
Build with recycled boxes. Cardboard boxes, tubes and tape make a quick sculpture. Ask your child to leave a gap to look through and to turn the model round to see how it looks from each side.
Near and far from the window. Look out of a window and pick one nearby thing and one distant thing. Which looks bigger? Which one covers part of another? Draw them with the nearer thing overlapping the further one.
Spot sculpture on a walk. Gates, statues, carved benches, fountains and play structures are all forms with space around them. Walk round one together, staying on the pavement and away from roads, and ask what changes as you move.

Leads on to

Key Stage 2: Pencil and charcoal drawing
Key Stage 2: Painting techniques
Key Stage 2: Sculpture with clay

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Updated 20 October 2026.