Science, technology, engineering, and math pervade every part of our lives. We use science experiments to live and stay healthy, engineering to move and build, technology to learn, and math in more ways than we can count (pun intended). But do you know what puts the creativity in all these things? Art. That’s why putting the “A” in STEAM opens up possibilities beyond our wildest expectations.
Art influences everything
Any time you draw a blueprint, design a motor, or create a light panel, you are using art. Any time you want to showcase movement and purpose, or want to diagram how things work, art enhances the presentation by being a visual or audial part of the finished invention. Including Art along with the other topics helps you picture how things work.
It’s not looking at a painting or sculpture in particular that teaches us how to write code for a computer; it’s the path taken to get to the finished picture or sculpture that matters. How did they know how big to make the sculpture’s base? How tall could they make it without having it fall over? What colors were needed to make the sky that twilight rosy red or a house the color of well-worn wood? How do you sketch an eye so it’s in proportion to the rest of the face?
Understanding the background, laying out the basic structure of size and graphics, and learning to record the results of those experiments, can help prepare students for a successful future in a career of their choice.
STEAM helps students engage
By adding the “A” to STEM, teachers are better able to interest students who may not specialize in engineering or technology but need to study it for their craft. With STEAM, the pressure is off to become a scientist or engineer — you can become a designer, digital sound technician, coder, chef, architect, or a medical illustrator, too. A STEAM framework teaches students how to think critically and creatively from the very beginning, preparing them for careers that often wind up outside the basic sciences.
Every doodle becomes a blueprint, every sequence of numbers becomes a code, and every complete sentence becomes instructions for how to build what you want to build. Art encompasses creativity from its explosive beginning through the final product.
Why not put the “A” in your STEM curriculum? We have an entire website section dedicated to STEAM projects and products, plus a section on Teacher Resources to include art in your STEAM project today! We can custom-make kits to your specifications for your STEAM project, and offer products to help explain complex theories in simple, hands-on terms.