Outdoor Painting Projects That Amp the Art in STEAM

STEAM activities are a great way to keep in the habit of thinking, creating and exploring during summer break. Now that warmer weather is finally here, you can take your projects outside, where the kids can make big(ger) messes, and clean-up is as simple as turning on your garden hose (or waiting for the next rainstorm to blow through).

Here are three messy-fun art projects to help stimulate summer learning:

Get into the swing of things with pendulum painting. If you’ve got a large patch of bare driveway, this is the perfect project. With a basic setup that even the most clueless parent can copy, your kids will create mesmerizing swirls, loops and splatters of color while exploring the physics of pendulums. The how-to includes a simple recipe for washable sidewalk paint.

Drop a gravity bomb. Kids love learning about that mysterious thing called gravity, and what better way to teach them than by letting them see it in action? Have your kid stand on a small step ladder or stool for splat art, dropping paint-soaked pom poms down onto a roll of butcher paper, or deposit paint at the top of a mounted canvas with pipettes or spoons and watch it drip down.

Make like a volcano and erupt art. Introduce your kids to this colorful spin on the old “Mentos and soda” explosion trick to create an eruption of color on canvas. Part of what’s cool about this activity is its unpredictability — you don’t know how your eruptions are going to spread out on the canvas, and the possibilities of what you could do with your abstract shapes after they dry are endless (think monster faces, giant flowers, alien spaceships!).

Find tips to get started and discover five more messy outdoors art projects that will keep their mental wheels greased all summer long at parentmap.com/messyart. ■

— Sarah Bradley

character, empowering them for life.

RSM is “among the top 10 schools in the world.” – Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth