Magnet and Marble Painting

In our classroom we love to engage children in science and mathematical activities. When you add art to the experience, you have what is know as a 'STEAM' activity. STEAM is an educational acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and math. According to Sharapan (2012), the arts are a natural part of the early childhood experience; art helps children to explore science, technology, engineering, and math concepts in new and exciting ways. STEAM helps to differentiate tasks and encourage children to explore and communicate content and knowledge using different modalities of learning.      

Today we set up an interesting provocation that immediately drew the children to our art area. We placed our clear sensory table on top of two large wooden blocks. In three cups were the primary colours of paint and metal marbles. 

The children were encouraged to find the marble and drop it onto the clear lid.

Using a strong magnet the children were able to manipulate the metal marble on top of the lid; dragging it around and leaving a trail of paint behind!

As more paint was added and the marble was moved around the lid, the colours began to mix together to form secondary shades.

So in addition to the STEAM components, colour mixing was also being explored by the children. There was also some interesting discussion about the kind of lines the marble 'wrote' including straight, curvy and zigzag.

Children also had to exercise control as the marble could easily fall off the lid if they weren't careful and deliberate with their actions.

 

 

Even with a lot of paint on the lid the children were able to manipulate the marble by using a very strong magnet.

Look at these lovely shades of new colours!

Once the child had finished exploring, we encouraged him or her to make a print of the art by placing a large piece of paper on top of the paint...

...and lifting it off!

Beautiful!

To learn more about STEAM please visit http://steamedu.com/.  

Sharapan, Hedda Young Children, v67 n1 p36-40 Jan 2012

Candy Cane Marble Painting

Rolling marbles around in paint creates candy cane inspired art. The children learn to control the speed and direction of the marble by manipulating the tray. 

Wooden Marble Run

We introduced a new wooden marble run to the children today. This is a very complicated building toy that promotes planning around cause and effect, persistance and problem-solving.

The children needed to work together to fit the pieces so the marble would roll through the grooves and holes of the pieces. Unlike plastic runs that snap together, the children had to continually experiment with how to put the pieces together to make the track work. 

We overheard some wonderful conversation as the children orally described their vision for the track. 

The children were very supportive to each other; we overheard many positive comments and cooperative play. 

We can't wait to see what else our little engineers build!

Marble Run Painting

Dropping paint covered marbles on paper and seeing what tracks they make is always fun. The children realized that the more paint on the marble the slower they moved.

Marbles

When searching our basement for some Halloween decorations, we stumbled upon an old collection of marbles. Caleb was fascinated by them and was eager to bring them upstairs to explore. We decided to place them on our light table in order to see them a little more clearly. 

The light from the table illuminated the marbles, showing off their variety of colours and highlighting the embellishments found within. They were quite beautiful! Caleb noticed the colours and was eager to point out to me the ones he recognized. He also sorted the marbles by colour and size and described his favourites.

The smooth surface of the light table was also perfect for spinning and rolling the marbles and Caleb enjoyed flicking a few at a time and watching them ricochet off of each other. It was interesting to observe this 'cause and effect' game that he had created.

Finding the marble collection just proves that it doesn't take expensive games or elaborate activities to encourage discovery, creativity, problem-solving, and rich opportunities for oral language. If we trust young learners with a variety of interesting materials, they will teach us about the possibilities!