Pollock-bots

One of my goals for the art room this year is to bring in at least one (hopefully more) STEAM art project per grade level. The first glass to get to try their hands at some Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics integration was our third graders! After learning about how Kandinsky worked with line in his painting, we learned about Jackson Pollock's life, art and his art making process.

We read the story, Action Jackson written by Jan Greenberg, Sandra Jordan and Robert Andrew Parker and learned that Pollock make his paintings by putting the canvas on the floor, walking around and sometimes ON his painting and dripping or flinging paint from brushes and paint sticks using entire body! Sometimes people call his style action painting!

Students then created doodle and bristle robots using vibration motors, batteries, cups, toothbrushes and tape. Their robots had the ability to draw through motion. Students worked in groups and had to use lots of team work, problem solving to get their robots to create a work of art together.

After the students completed this project we were able to have an incredible reflection discussion about how art and technology came together and worked together in this project. We put together a display to share with our school about what we learned.