What happens when you mix Science and Art together????

You make an incredible statement that the whole school was a part of and you learn a ton.  Who knew learning Science, reading a book and designing a circle could all be linked together?  Here at Oak Hill Academy we love to work together and collaborate learning and fun.

Plan of attack

So here’s what we did.  Mrs. Cahalane, the lower school science teacher, taught her classes about rainbows. She went to to say they are beautiful but there is so much more to know. For instance, the science of the rainbow, how it forms, why it forms, what is white light, and what is the spectrum?  Through the use of prisms students see first hand that white light is actually made out of all 7 colors of the rainbow.  

Miss DiMaggio, art teacher, focused on the color wheel, color theory, and the use of various media (acrylics, watercolor, marker, crayon, pastels). In addition students learned about complimentary colors, primary colors, secondary colors, tertiary colors, and color hues.

All classes read, “The Dot” by Peter Reynolds, published in 2003. It is a book about a little girl named Vashti who not only thinks she can’t draw, but won’t even try. Her protest is to just put one dot onto a piece of paper, that she jabbed with frustration.  With encouragement from a caring teacher, not only does she try but she ends up creating beautiful artwork out of her dots & she ends up believing in herself and encourages others to try too!

We asked everyone to “make a dot and see where it takes you” and we ended up with a beautiful rainbow of art made by our students!  

The result of collaboration

This was a fun collaborative project and we hope the students can see that two seemingly unrelated subjects (science and art) are actually related! “A rainbow is beautiful” is an art statement. Likewise “a rainbow is actually white light broken up” is a science statement. We hope the bulletin board in the commons will act as a reminder of the message in the book – don’t give up, believe in yourself, encourage others…there is a creative spirit in everyone so try, make your mark and see where it takes you .     

Inspired by a National Dot Day post on Instagram, we will be ready for the day with this special project.   We thank our wonderful private school in Lincroft New Jersey for always being supportive of our students and teachers. Together we are the best private school in Monmouth County!