Prehistoric painting
Discovering how and why our ancient ancestors made art, experimenting with natural materials to make homemade paints and playing with scale to paint on a range of surfaces.
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Painting and mixed media: Prehistoric painting
Important update!
The Year 1–6 Painting units have been updated for 2026–2027 to provide a clearer progression of painting skills and knowledge. An updated version of this unit will be available from July 2026.
The updated Art, Year 3: Exploring texture with paint and collage unit includes content that is currently taught in the existing Art, Year 2: Life in colour unit.
To avoid repetition, schools teaching the updated painting progression should:
- Teach the existing Art, Year 3: Prehistoric painting unit during the 2026–2027 academic year.
- From 2027–2028, teach the updated Art, Year 3: Exploring texture with paint and collage unit.
The current version of this unit will move to the Content archive in August 2027, where it will remain permanently available.
Explore the Art and design, Long-term plan for 2026–2027.
Unit outcomes
Pupils who are secure will be able to:
- Recognise the processes involved in creating prehistoric art.
- Explain approximately how many years ago prehistoric art was produced.
- Use simple shapes to build initial sketches.
- Create a large scale copy of a small sketch.
- Use charcoal to recreate the style of cave artists.
- Demonstrate good understanding of colour mixing with natural pigments.
- Discuss the differences between prehistoric and modern paint.
- Make choices about equipment or paint to recreate features of prehistoric art, experimenting with colours and textures.
- Successfully make positive and negative handprints in a range of colours.
- Apply their knowledge of colour mixing to make natural colours.
Suggested prior learning
Painting and mixed media: Life in colour
This assumes that you are following Kapow Primary’s Art & design Long-term plan – standard.
Lessons
Lesson 1: Exploring prehistoric art
Lesson 2: Charcoal animals
Lesson 3: Prehistoric palette
Lesson 4: Painting on the cave wall
Lesson 5: Hands on a cave wall
Key skills
Key knowledge
Related content
Unit resources
Knowledge organiser: Art & design – Y3 Painting and mixed-media
Aimed at pupils, two pages providing key facts and definitions from the unit "Painting and mixed media: Prehistoric painting".
Vocabulary display – Art and design Y3: Prehistoric painting
A display version of the key vocabulary from the Prehistoric art unit.
Cross-curricular opportunities
History
Mathematics: Geometry – properties of shapes