Mill Road Elementary students last month embraced the Olympic spirit in STEAM class through several projects, including a collaboration with their art class.
The students studied the concepts of friction, gravity and measurement by creating skiers to go down a miniature ski jump, and created ice hockey goals and sticks. Throughout both projects, STEAM teacher Sybil Bell said, the students discussed and put into use the engineering design process.
Outside the classroom, the students also kept track of the medal count on the hallway wall throughout the games. “They’re very, very into it,” she said.
It was also the inspiration for a collaboration that resulted in decorations throughout the Mill Road building, including a hallway-length display for Family Fun Night Feb. 26.
The students used the STEAM lab’s new Beaver Bots and ChompSaw cardboard cutters, many acquired through a Red Hook Education Foundation grant, to create three-dimensional cardboard decorations; third-grade students cut pine trees and fourth- and fifth-graders created ice skates. They then took their designs to the art class to paint before they went on display.
Bell noted the collaboration is only the first of many times the STEAM and art classes will work together on projects.
“We have big plans for spring,” she said, noting students have been working on “lifecycles” in both classes.
“In art, the fourth- and fifth-grades are designing their beetles, then they’re coming and cutting them and putting them together here,” Bell said. “We’re getting our science, our art, it’s really neat.”