If you’d walked in at the end of Tinker camp, you would have thought it was all about art. Paint striped paper hung around the room drying as the 3 volunteer teachers wound down for the day.
The start of the day was anything but art. Inclined planes peppered the projector screen and student’s worksheets. Our little engineers learned about simple machines and how they help our everyday lives go. Moreover, the kids learned the “story” of an engineer. They asked, what is it like to be an engineer in today’s world?
How then, did this become an art class? After every lesson we teach, there is a hands-on activity, which is where our art comes in. To show the power of the incline plane, we gave each kiddo a tin foil pan, paint, a marble, and a strip of paper. Our teachers plopped the student’s choice of paint color in the pan and dropped the marble in after. Students then inclined their pan at different angles to “paint” their paper with the marble. The result? A mix of colors worthy of the fridge.