Add A to STEM: Bring Out Your Inner MacGyver
Grab everything you have on hand at home and let your kids tap into their creativity and come up with art projects that baffle the imagination. Get your little munchkins to throw in some creativity to spice up logic and science and let their inner MacGyver shine through.
Yes, we’re still in quarantine or lock down. So, that’s why we’re always looking for activities that can keep you and your children entertained. But of course, we want them to be learning as well. The thing is, our understanding of learning has changed so much especially across generations. We had the advent of STEM education, and now it’s evolving towards STEAM.
What’s considered a solid fact 10 years ago may no longer be the case. So it’s important to keep an open-mind and embrace the path to become a lifelong learner. And as you’ve probably heard before – the best way to learn anything is through doing, and for children the best way to learn is through play.
Why add an A to STEM?
Did you know that children who engage in art regularly are four times more likely to perform well in the other STEM subjects? STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths. If you start introducing them to art regularly at a young age, you’ll be setting your children up for success in many different skill areas. Not only is art proven to improve creativity – but it also helps to boost logical, critical and out of the box thinking. That’s why they added the A (Art) to make it STEAM Education.
Here are 3 reasons to start getting your kids into art:
It keeps them engaged:
If you’re a parent right now you know that it’s difficult to find enough activities to keep your child happy and away from boredom every single day. They aren’t going to school, they aren’t playing with friends, they’re at home with you and you don’t want them spending all of their time on a digital screen. With drawing, painting, coloring, or making (the term now encompasses a lot) you’re allowing them to keep their little minds learning and occupied. Not to plant any seeds in your head – but who knows – they might just be able to accidentally invent something that solves one of your daily pet peeves.
Art helps them learn:
What better way to learn than to discover and build something? Walk down memory lane and relive childhood memories where you built a bridge out of glue and popsicle sticks, or those boxes stacked into a castle or a small robot. Yes – funky little things like that from drawing, painting to cutting and maybe even stitching is a good way for them to explore their curious little minds. Afterall – we use models in most real world environments to better imagine and understand the world. Who knows – the next project your kids try out could help them debunk questions like – Where does wind come from? How do wheels work? Why aren’t trees blue and the sky green? There’s no end to the list. Tactile and visual learning is not only fun, it’s one of the best ways for many of us to learn and understand different concepts.
It gives them a sense of accomplishment and it’s fun!
It’s important to a child’s development that they feel a sense of accomplishment or achievement. It leads to them learning to be effective and developing a sense of mastery over the environment they are in. This in turn leads to development of a positive self-esteem, feelings of acceptance, adequacy, and self worth. We want our children to grow up with that, don’t we? It’s not something that we can teach, it’s something that they need to learn on their own. But, we can guide them and the field of art and creativity is rife with opportunities for kids to feel accomplished. Afterall – there’s no right or wrong answer like a math problem or a vocabulary quiz – the only limit is one’s own imagination!
There are so many benefits to children learning art, especially at a young age, that if I listed them all here you’d be reading for at least an hour. To summarize – art helps them develop into happy little beings with the best chance of success in their lives, however they choose to measure it. There’s probably no better time than the present to get started. So, while we’re all at home for a while longer and schools are closed indefinitely as the Covid-19 situation continues – seize the day and embrace the A in STEAM. If you need ideas, feel free to drop us a message on our Facebook page and we’ll do our best to find something that’ll interest you and your little ones. Also – to find out more about why STEM became STEAM, read our article “From STEM to STEAM”.