STEAMed Magazine October 2015 | Page 6

ART is a vital component of education. It allows students to work creatively, develop fine motor skills and expand their worldview. As important as is it to include art into everyday education, it can be difficult to incorporate it into a STEM/STEAM classroom. Since it’s our mission at Art to Remember to support and promote art education, we’re bringing you two lesson plans that your students will love. These plans are simple, inexpensive to execute and can be adapted to work in a variety of classrooms. You can watch the video, check out the descriptions below or download the lesson plans (Painting with Pendulums and Art Bot). Painting with Pendulums smaller or larger versions or encourage your students to brainstorm ways to make their own. Once the pendulums are constructed, you will need to punch a small hole in the bottom of a paper cup and place a piece of paper under the pendulum. Then, you will mix equal parts acrylic paint and water and pour some of the mixture into the cup while placing your finger over the hole. Then, pull the cup back and release it on a slight curve so that it will travel in a circular motion. Once the cup comes to a stop, either let the paint dry or repeat the process with a different paint color. After drying, you can encourage your students to add elements to their spiral artwork. In our example, we drew shapes and animals with a marker and added additional color with watercolors. For this science-based lesson, you and your students will construct simple pendulums to demonstrate Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion. While using the pendulums to demonstrate gravity and inertia, they will simultaneously create spiral artwork. In our example, we turned two barstools upside down, taped a rod between them and strung a paper cup from the rod. Feel free to make 6