Activities for Kids that Combine Art and Science 20 Ways to Combine Art and Science
Painting Ice
Math in Art Art is more than just creating beautiful pieces, many of the great master painters used math concepts to make their pieces even more appealing. Art helps other subjects come alive! So how can we integrate math into art for our students? Here s over 15 resources for covering both math and art concepts in a lesson! How to make an orderly tangle of triangles great for a geometry class!
Teach bar graphing skills (and even pi!) with this city skyline activity. Paint with compasses! Great for introducing this tool to younger students. Teach symmetry with this self-portrait activity.
Tessellations have always been popular STEAM activities here s one for fish, there s plenty more online for all grade levels! This activity can help students struggling with the Pythagorean Theorem grasp the concept while making this piece of art! These geometric stars can also be used for tracking New Year s Resolutions!
Orange Buoyancy Science Experiment Kids will love learning why things sink and float in this easy, hands -on experiment. Getting Ready This experiment was ridiculously easy to set up. I grabbed a tall glass vase {a large bowl works too}, an orange, and water and we were ready to roll.
Sink or Float? I called both my 3 and 5 year old over and asked them if they thought the orange would sink or float in water. They both felt the orange and said that it was heavy and would sink. Next, I had each child pour water in the vase until about 3/4 full. After they tried to sink it by pushing and poking it under the water, I removed the orange and asked them to peel the orange. I then asked them if they thought the peeled orange would sink or float. They both thought it would still float because it would get smaller with the peel removed.wrong again! The orange sank to the bottom. My kiddos were thoroughly confused. They continued to take the peeled orange in and out of the water to see if they could somehow get it to float again.
Shaving Cream Rain Clouds I wasn t sure how these shaving cream rain clouds were going to turn out, but they were beautiful! I love any experiment that s easy enough for my kids to do themselves. And I also love when I get to use a rainbow assortment of colours to create something beautiful. So this was a winner! This activity was easy to put together and allowed us to learn a little bit about weather. Although, my girls were definitely more interested in the hands on part, not so much the learning. But what can you do? You ll need: o o o o o o A couple of clear glasses, vases, or bowls (it s fun to switch up the shapes and sizes!) Food coloring Shaving cream Small bowls or containers that hold 1 to 2 ounces Water An eye dropper, syringe or 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon We re definitely getting some good use out of the shaving cream we bought from the dollar store. I originally bought four small cans, and so far we ve used them to make puffy paint,shaving cream play dough, and now this experiment. And two of the bottles are still fairly full. I guess a little goes a long way with shaving cream.
Start by filling the small containers with water. The less water you use (so the more concentrated the food colouring), the faster your rain will drop. But on the other hand, the more water you use, the more rain you ll be able to make. So keep that in mind as you fill them up. Add different colours of food colouring to each of the small containers. My containers held about 1 ounce of water and I added about 10 drops of food colouring. (Except I only added 5 drops of purple, because it gets dark really fast). Fill a clear glass with water about 2/3 full.
Top it with a generous amount of shaving cream. Use the eye dropper (or syringe, or 1/4 tsp measuring spoon) to drop the different colours of water onto the shaving cream cloud. The closer you squirt to the edges, the faster it will go through the shaving cream and come down as rain.
You can tell your kids that the water is like the air, and the shaving cream is like the clouds. And as the clouds get saturated with water, they produce rain. Or if your kids are young with mine, you can just say Oooo look at all the pretty colours! I m not sure my 3 year old and 5 year old really cared that we were trying to represent clouds and rain here.
They just thought it was lots of fun to play with the different colours and to mix everything together! My 5 year old enjoyed adding all of the colours to her glass. I told them hers was more like a storm cloud, and they seemed happy enough with that. My 3 year old can t quite get the hang of the eye dropper yet, so she just used a small measuring spoon to slowly drop the colours into the glass. It s going to take a few days for all that food colouring to come off of our countertops. It s a good thing we plan to replace them at some point! It was pretty fun to watch the ominous dark rain clouds start to let go of little blue water droplets!
And then we did it all again with a small, square vase. This one was definitely my favourite size and shape to use. There was lots of room to add all of the colours, and lots of volume so we could actually add tons of the food colouring to it without it turning into a black mess.
Watercolor and Salt. Science and Art exploration for kids Watercolour paper, salt and watercolour paint come together to create some incredible results. What makes the best results? That's what you'll need to explore!
Materials: Squares of watercolour paper, salt, watercolour paint (we used liquid watercolour here), brushes.
Just go for it! Use the materials, see what happens." Should you put the watercolour/water down first or the salt? My kids discovered the answer to that pretty quickly.. What if you use barely any water? Why do you think it doesn't work? Can you use the salt to draw certain colours across your pattern?