STEAM Tuesdays: Let's Explore the Arts

Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced the exciting fields of Science, Technology, and Engineering to celebrate STEAM Tuesdays. That means we only have two letters left to explore in our 21st century curriculum! This week, we’re highlighting the “A” in STEAM, which stands for the Arts. It’s an essential component that makes each concept in STEAM come alive!

By incorporating the arts into early education, students of all ages learn to creatively communicate and express their ideas to understand each layer of STEAM. The Arts encourage children to expand their thinking beyond the activity in front of them, while also helping them develop critical social-emotional skills. By exploring the arts, they realize there are no limits to what they can create or how they can express themselves.

Within this important layer of STEAM, children explore four different Art Zones:

 Dramatic Arts | Musical Arts | Language Arts | Visual Arts

As part of our modern approach to learning, children also discover ways to collaborate with classmates in a creative way. In doing so, students are gaining life and academic skills we like to call the 4Cs. Each one is critical to experiencing success in school, and in our always changing world.

Adrian the Artist, the fourth member of our STEAM Team, encourages kids to embrace their imaginations as they sing, dance, paint, and write their feelings and ideas. Adrian wants students to feel inspired by the fascinating world around them, and to discover the limitless ways they can artistically express themselves.

What makes this STEAM Tuesday extra special?

Today is also the start of Chinese New Year!

The year 2022 is the Year of the Tiger, so what better way to honor tradition than with a tiger-inspired activity? Let’s make a tiger mask together!

Materials needed:

• Paper plates
• Orange construction or tissue paper
• Black construction paper
• Scissors
• Glue
• Black marker

Instructions:

1. Help your child cut holes in the paper plate for the eyes.
2. Have your child tear the orange paper into small pieces.
3. Glue the pieces of orange paper onto the plate, being sure not to cover the eye holes.  
4. While that is drying, have your child tear the black construction paper into skinny strips.
5. Glue the black construction paper onto the mask to look like stripes.
6. Use the marker to draw a mouth.

While the creation of this mask explores the Visual Arts, we can even further expand upon the learnings from this project by diving into our other three Art Zones!

Dramatic Arts: Have your children wear their masks and act like a tiger! They can walk like a tiger on all fours and give their best tiger growl. RAWR!

Musical Arts: Parades are often part of Chinese New Year celebrations, so encourage children to march around to the rhythm of music and have their own parade!

Language Arts: Kids can explore language arts by investigating story about tigers. Some fun book choices are There’s a Tiger in the Garden by Lizzy Stewart or Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus.

This activity also allows children to practice using their Engineering skills by working to create the masks and Math skills as they identify shapes and patterns in the torn pieces of paper.  This is a fabulous example of how the Arts come alive in the Math and Engineering Zones as children express their understanding and Creativity.