Curriculum ideas: art and design

Secondary

Set pupils a challenge to design a device to harvest fruit and/or sort apples by size or weight considering how easily the fruit can be damaged.
Get pupils to design seating for your school orchard space. Consider shade, wind...and the likely size of your new trees in 80 or more years!
Investigate the properties of different woods - including carving and sanding apple, pear and cherry.
Encourage pupils to play with probability using the human fruit machine: Three pupils select at random a piece of fruit from a bowl in front of them - hidden from view of 'the player'. On the count of three, each present their chosen fruit (apple, pear, cherries etc). The player then decides whether to ‘hold’ or ‘twist’ each of their fruit portions….aiming for three of a kind as quickly as possible. Devise a scoring system and even better, like the Kingsbury May Day Festival players in Somerset, a brightly painted cardboard fruit machine (with operating handle and three windows!) for the fruit selectors to sit in.

Look at paintings and sculpture, e.g. The Magic Apple Tree by Samuel Palmer, The Apple Pickers, Eragny by Pissaro, "Ceci n'est pas un pomme" by Magritte, still-lifes and orchards by Cezanne, van Gogh, etc.
Ask pupils to explore the subtle differences of colour and texture by painting different apple varieties. Create a mural or tapestry celebrating local variety. Check out Common Ground’s phenomenal Apple Map of the British Isles for inspiration!
Construct a map for your new school orchard recording the varieties – and their location – in a creative way and which will withstand the elements, everyday wear and tear and the passing of time. Remember fruit trees can live for over 100 years...so information documented for future generations will one day be gratefully discovered and deciphered.

Design posters to promote Apple Day, your particular varieties or the benefits of healthy eating.
Design the cover and illustrations for an Apple Day apple cookery book, story book, poetry anthology or findings from your orchard mapping research.
Design special Apple Day clothing: t-shirts, hats, dresses (apple printed fabric), socks or a crown and cloak for the Apple Day King and Queen, to be worn on the day.
Make a video of orchards, fruit production and traditions in your area or interviews with local people.

Enable children to explore different textures by making collages out of bark, leaf and blossom rubbings.
Ask children to draw their apple trees in different seasons: with bare branches, in blossom, bearing fruit and in autumnal splendour.
Use apples cut across the core to produce brightly coloured ‘apple-star’ paint prints.
Decorate bare trees on Tree Dressing Day which takes place in the first week of December.
Design your own Fruit Hero...