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Welcome to Creative Mama, where mamas can have fun connecting creatively with their kids and find meaning in mamahood. |
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Welcome to Creative Mama, where mamas can have fun connecting creatively with their kids and find meaning in mamahood. |
Artist and Engineer, Leonardo Da Vinci once said, 'Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.' He demonstrated this by creatively combining and connecting science and art to make important discoveries.
Why does this matter? STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) focused on science concepts. Kids who learn creative methods with STEAM (including Art within the acronym) make connections between concepts, learn to inquire and problem-solve in new and exciting ways. Today, creative methods are acknowledged more than ever as vital for future-ready employees and as a life skill. One way I incorporate STEAM into play for my three kids is with marbles - encouraging creativity and challenging their engineering skills. The kids and I were inspired to create our own version of Marble Runs and Trampolines from this post on Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls - thank you so much Mama Sarah for your amazing ideas that helped to grow my kids basic understanding of physics concepts. WHAT WE USE:
LET'S CREATE! Try dropping a marble on a balloon to see it bounce! Then get to work creating marble runs that include your trampolines! Our first track was simple, and we used wooden blocks to support the wooden bridge train tracks. We also used masking tape to attach the paper towel rolls to the blocks. CONNECT & INSPIRE... Not only is this a great collaborative and engineering activity, but a great way to learn physics concepts and observation skills for older kids. My sons enjoyed tackling the following challenges I gave them:
I would love to hear what you think in the comments section! Go to Amazing Mazes, Painting with Marbles and Sensory Play with Light for some more creative STEAM activities.
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Here's a Lego maze that will amaze your kids! Mazes are fun and a great creative activity to encourage kids to apply basic Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths (STEAM) concepts into their play. To learn more about STEAM, go to Fun Marble Runs!
Mazes are also great for improving fine motor skills. They can be crafted, for example, out of a large cardboard box lid and straws or built from Lego. The boys raided their Lego box for some of the mazes pictured above. WHAT WE USE:
LET'S CREATE! Making sure that the path remains about 4 studs wide to comfortably fit a regular size marble, let your kids experiment with how they construct their selected lego pieces on to the lego flat board. Use different length legos shapes until they're happy with their completed maze. Then place the marble at the start of the maze and tip the flat board in the angle that the marble path is constructed to enable the marble to roll towards the finish line. CONNECT & INSPIRE... This is an opportune activity for the kids to work together and collaborate on their ideas of how to construct the maze, what blocks to use or how complex they want to make it. They can even devise how tall the walls should be in order to prevent the marble from falling out! Go to Painting with Marbles and Sensory Play with Light for some more creative STEAM activities. |
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