STEAM Decorations

It has been a very long time since I've posted anything! What can I say, I've been busy, you know, with life. One thing that I had sooo much fun doing recently was organizing a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) Night event at my school. I loved coming up with different activities, and most importantly with different ideas on how to decorate our space. Here are just a few of the decorations we used for our event :)

My "station" consisted of making paper plate sharks, so I thought of making these signs to add to the ambiance :) Of course my bilingual self deemed it necessary to make a sign in English and Spanish to make all parents and students feel welcomed and included in the fun activities :)

Materials:

-2 White foam Boards (Dollar Tree)

-Pencil

-Paint brushes

-Brown and Black Acrylic Paint (Walmart)

-Retractable razor knife (Dollar Tree)

Steps:

1) Free-draw the shape of the sign on the foam boards with a pencil(don't worry about it being straight, it's supposed to look like it took a beating from sharks! lol). Write the letters/message in the middle of the sign, either on one side or on both sides.

2) Using black acrylic paint and a brush, paint over the shape and letters of the sign.

3) Using brown acrylic paint and a brush, paint the middle of the sign to make it look like distressed wood.

4) Once the paint has dried, use the retractable razor knife to cut the board around the shape.

For the entrance to the auditorium, we decided to make a "jellyfish". As you can see, the doors served as a good place to display the Shark signs.

Materials:

-Butcher paper/large construction paper

-Colorful plastic ribbon (Dollar Tree)

-Tape

Steps:

1) Cut butcher paper/large construction paper into a half circle shape. Size will depend on where you will place it, ours was bigger due to it being a double door entrance.

2) Measure out plastic ribbon strings to specific lengths and cut lots of them!

3) Use tape to add the ribbon to the bottom/flat side of the Jellyfish.

4) Use painters tape or any other kind of heavy duty tape to put up the jellyfish.

While this was part of the activity, I figured i'd share this as it can be made and used as a decor piece as well. I had all the supplies ready and everything pre-cut to help the process move along. All they had to do was color and glue it together. It worked out very nicely and glad to say parents were equally engaged in the activity as the students. Notice my awesome step by step instructions for the students and parents :)

Materials:

-Paper plates (Dollar Tree) not glossy! I cannot stress this enough :)

-Blue crayon/color pencil/markers

-Black sharpie

-Googly eyes

-Scissors

-Glue

Steps:

1) Get 1 paper plate and cut out a triangle (think of a pizza slice!)

2) Using the triangle piece, cut it to form the shape of a tail.

3) Using the flat part of another paper plate, make a large dorsal fin and a smaller fin, and 2 zigzag pieces for the teeth.

4) Using the blue crayon/color pencil/marker (which ever you'd like, we used crayons) color half of the cut out paper plate, the tail, the fins, and the teeth.

5) Glue the tail, fins, and googly eyes to the shark paper plate.

6) Use the black sharpie to make gill lines and angry eyebrows on the shark.

This was perhaps one of the easiest decoration pieces. Well actually, the ocean themed table covers I found at the Dollar Tree store were the easiest since all we had to do was tape them up on the walls! We decided to add a little shower cap jellyfish just for fun.

Materials:

-Shower caps (Dollar Tree)

-Plastic Ribbon

-Tape

Steps:

1) Cut out different length ribbon strips.

2) Use tape to attach the ribbon strips around a shower cap.

Another lucky find at the Dollar tree!! When I saw these colorful paper plates I immediately thought about the rainbow fish. Why wouldn't I try this? It was just too cute and easy not to make :)

Materials:

-Paper plates (Dollar Tree)

-Scissors

-Construction Paper (Dollar Tree)

-Circle punchers

-Tape

Steps:

1) Cut a triangle shape from a paper plate (again, think pizza piece!)

2) Cut out a white circle and a black circle from the construction paper (Luckily I remembered I had these different size circle punchers!)

3) Tape the triangle shape to the paper plate, forming the tail of the fish.

4) Tape the white and black circles to the paper plate, forming the eye.

This was perhaps the biggest decoration piece because I not only wanted it to look good, I also wanted the students to be able to interact with it. I knew parents would love the opportunity take pictures of their kids in this submarine. Guess what? not only did they like it, some parents even decided to get their own picture in the submarine! My heart was full :)

I decided to create a whole separate Instructable entry for this in which I go more in depth as to how I made this beauty :)