STEMspiration – Space

Here is your fortnightly dose of STEMspiration, this #babipurSTEM challenge is all about having fun whilst learning about SPACE. We hope you’ve all had a lovely Easter holidays and can’t to see your crafty activities.

You can find the details of the Space challenge >here< and there is still plenty of time left to enter.

Let’s paint the stars

We thought we’d do something a little bit different today; a mini watercolour tutorial with the brilliant Okonorm Watercolour Tin. Our not so little ones wanted to learn how to paint the stars and so we took the opportunity to make it educational and tie it all in with our current STEM theme.

We looked on the Hubble website at all the amazing images of star clusters, colourful nebula and galaxies, the solar system offers so much more than some fun new words for us to think about.

Okonorm Watercolour Paint tutorial

Water colours are a STEM essential. You can do so much with them and it is such a great visual for little ones too. Add a splash of water and you can brush one colour into another colour and create a different colour. Art and science collide in one crafty activity!

Using water colours is really simple, here is what you’ll need if you want to do your own space themed painting;

Water colour paper
Paint brush
Water colour paints – we highly recommend this Okonorm tin!
White paint or a paint pen – we love the Okornom finger paints
Clean water
Old toothbrush

*additionally a Close Parent Coverall might be a good idea too!

1. First of all make sure you have a clear space to work in. Using your paintbrush and water, brush all over your paper to completely cover it so it’s nice and wet.
2. Using one colour at a time, paint little sections of colour. The wet paper will allow the paint to bleed and it will naturally blend together. We encouraged our little ones to swirl the paint brush round in tiny circles and imagine they were drawing clouds, which worked really well.
3. Let it dry for a few minutes or have fun gently blowing on the different colours so they blend into each other.
4. Repeat step 2 and step 3 a few more times until you have a good build up of colour.
5. Any bits you want to change just add more water and go with the flow! You can always use a paper towel or cloth wipe to dab off any excess water too.
6. You can let it dry completely at this point if you’re painting the stars with a paint pen or if you’re using white paint we think it works better with the painting still a little wet. An old toothbrush works best here so dip it in the paint and clean off the excess. Using your finger tips scrape/flick the paint off the bristles whilst holding the brush directly over your painting and watch as hundreds of stars burst into life.
7. Let it dry and hang proudly on the fridge.
8. Take a picture of it and post it on social media with the tag #babipurSTEM and show all your friends and family!
   
   

 

How do you enter?

All you have to do is post a picture or video on your public Instagram account or in the Babipur Hangout Group on Facebook showing your little ones making learning fun whilst exploring the theme of SPACE. Use the tag #babipurSTEM so we can find your entries and on Instagram don’t forget to tag @babipur too!

Multiple entries are always encouraged and the challenge is open up to next Wednesday 24th April 2019 at 11am. Both the winner and the next challenge will be announced shortly after.

What’s the prize?

This fortnight we’re giving away the lovely Plan Toys Alien Spaceship Spinning top. This is a lovely little toy that’s not just fun to play with but educational too if you want to find out more about force and momentum.

We’re also giving away a set of Okonorm Modelling clay (choice of in stock colours) as it’s great for little ones to build muscle tone in their busy exploring little fingers.

You can find a blog post >here< explaining the concept of STEM if you’re unfamiliar with the idea. Please feel free to ask us any questions, this challenge is all about having fun whilst exploring a simple theme in an educational way.

We can’t wait to see what you all come up with for this challenge. We love looking through your entries and seeing how you make learning fun with Babipur!

#lovebabipur