Rainbow Photo Hunt STEAM Activity

I am pleased to introduce the next guest blogger in our series, Jamie from Hand Made Kids Art. Jamie is an art teacher and a mom who shares creative art ideas and projects for kids of all ages. She is here today sharing a fun way to put the "A" in STEAM.

Learn and master your colors with a rainbow color hunt. This STEAM activity combines science, technology and art for a fun twist on preschool color learning.

STEAM is the combination of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math. Hand Made Kids Art believes the inclusion of the Arts to STEM is essential to our young children’s future success. Teaching children how to think creatively and learning to be problem solvers is how we can prepare our children for the future.

With STEAM activities, the final product of the activity is not as important as the process or creating the product. Through the process of experimenting and exploring your child is using creative and critical thinking skills. Scientists, mathematicians, engineers and artists all use the same critical thinking skills to find new and innovative solutions.

Activity Objective: Child will observe and identify the use of color in their environment. Child will use technology to document their exploration of color with photography.

Materials:
Rainbow Hunt Printable
Clipboard
Pencil
Digital Camera (or Cell Phone Camera)
Printer
Hole Punch
Key Ring

Tutorial:
Step 1: Print off the rainbow hunt printable (or create your own) and place on the clipboard. My three year old requested her favorite color pink be included in the color hunt so I made two versions, one including pink.

Step 2: Go exploring and identify each color either outside in nature or inside the house.

Step 3: Document your “color” finds by taking a photograph of each color. Use the printable to keep track and check off what colors you have found.

Step 4: Once you have completed taking a photo of each color, download and print the photographs. We printed our photographs on 4x6 photo paper. Below is a collage of our final color photographs. All color photographs were taken by my five and three year old.

Step 5: Create your photo book. Punch a hole in the corner of each photograph and slide the photograph on to the key ring. You may print off the rainbow printable to use as the cover for the book or let your child create their own book cover.

Activity Extensions:
Write the color names on the back of the photographs.

Provide additional art experiences by letting your child experiment and explore making marks with color using a variety of materials, such as crayons, markers, and paint.

Related links from Hand Made Kids Art:

Photography Made Easy for Kids

How to Turn STEM into STEAM

How to Use Technology to Enrich Preschool Learning

Jamie is a certified Art Instructor having taught children of all ages. In addition to inspiring young minds and creating for Hand Made Kids Art, she is a busy mother of 3 children. Hand Made Kids Art focuses on quick, easy and inspiring art activities to grow creative kids. It doesn’t matter if you only have 5 minutes or 20 minutes, you can find time to create art with your children with Hand Made Kids Art. Follow along with our art adventures at HandMade Kids Art, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.