Creating Lessons with the STEM Approach

So excited about this post! Jamie shares an awesome way to turn into a STEM lesson with an artistic twist. Cannot wait to try this with my kids!

STEAM is the combination of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. At Hand Made Kids Art, we like to encourage the addition of “A” for the Arts to change STEM into STEAM.

By including the arts (visual art, music, drama, dance) in your learning activities you are encouraging and stretching your child’s creativity and critical thinking. It is important to not only raise life-long learners, but also to cultivate innovators and problem solvers. We don’t know what type of technology or industries lay ahead for our children, but by encouraging their critical and creative thinking skills you can help prepare your child for future success.

This STEAM activity is one example of how you can mix together science, technology and art for a fun twist on learning.

Most children are familiar with animation whether it is a favorite cartoon or animated movie. Teach your child the basic beginnings of animation with a stop motion animation video inspired by the classic flip book.

A flip book is a series of drawings that show a progression. When the pages of the book are flipped together fast it looks like the picture is moving or animated.

Activity Objective: Design an illustrated, flip book inspired, stop motion animation based on the water cycle.

It may be helpful for your child to have a basic understanding of how animation and a flip book work. You may follow our tutorial on Hand Made Kids Art on how to create a beginner flip book.

Once your child has an understanding of the stop motion animation process, you can easily add the technology to make an animated flip book on the computer with movie making software.

Materials

• Index Cards
• Coloring Material (Crayons, colored pencils, markers)
• Digital Camera (or cell phone with camera)
• Computer
• Movie Software (iMovie for Mac or MovieMaker for PC)

Tutorial

Step 1: Review the water cycle. We watched an old Bill Nye video to review the water cycle. My son loved the line about “dinosaur spit”.

Step 2: Draw out each step of the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection) on index cards. Challenge your child’s creative thinking by asking your child how they can visually draw each stage of the water cycle?

Similar to creating a flip book, make small changes on each index card to illustrate the water cycle. It does take some time to draw out enough cards for the animation.

Step 3: Photograph each index card individually. Download your photographs to the computer. Upload to your choice of movie software. (We used iMovie which came included on our Mac computer). If you are working with a PC you may wish to check out Movie Maker.

Step 4: In your choice of movie software, add your photographs and arrange them in order of the water cycle. Set the time of each photograph. We set each photograph to display for a half of a second. We also repeated the photographs to make the video a little bit longer and demonstrate how the water cycle continues.

Optional: Add music, text and rolling credits.

Step 5: Finalize your movie and export. Play for family and friends.

Activity Extensions:

Host a movie premiere for family and friends to debut the video.

Research and learn about occupations in the animation field such as illustrators, animators and producers.

Don’t have the technology? Create the same idea but make it a traditional flip book with paper. Technology is the tool, but the lesson objective still requires creative thinking and problem solving even without the technology.

Once your child understands how animation works they can apply this technology to any subject your are learning about. Let your child take the lead and create their own animation based on their interests and passion. Let them be curious and experiment.

About Jamie

Jamie is a certified Art Instructor having taught children of all ages. In addition to inspiring young minds and creating for Hand Made Kids Art, she is a busy mom of 3 children. Hand Made Kids Art focuses on quick, easy and inspiring art activities to grow creative kids. It doesn’t matter if you only have 5 minutes or 20 minutes, you can find time to create art with your children with Hand Made Kids Art. Follow along with our STEAM adventures at Hand Made Kids Art, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.