This minimum 2-hour STEAM programme is an excellent combination of science and visual art. By analysing familiar locations like their own school street or local park, students investigate how the placement of large and small objects on a ground plane creates the illusion of depth. Through “peephole” experiments and trial-and-error, students build problem-solving, resilience and flexibility skills by discovering how to manipulate perspective and scale on a 2D surface. The final collage phase fosters creativity, requiring students to make deliberate choices about horizon lines and element overlapping to build a realistic scene. By evaluating each other’s work against “real-world” criteria, students practice reason based communication to explain why certain artistic choices look “real” or “impossible.” It develops their critical thinking.

Brief description of the STEAM program

This STEAM program for children aged 6-8 combines knowledge and insights about science and visual arts. Using specific landscape elements linked to a particular environment, the street or the park, the children will make a collage in an (atmospheric) perspective. In the first phase of this Steam lesson, there is a millimetre and weight phase in which the pupils discover 2 types of landscapes according to their specific landscape elements. This is followed by a musical lesson phase in which, starting from observation of images from the children’s world, they investigate the suggestion of space and the placement of elements (large/small) in the ground plane (atmospheric perspective).Finally, the pupils create a characteristic landscape (street or park) in a collage where depth is suggested by placing specific landscape elements.

Age group/ Grade	Student numbers	Duration	Number of stages	Subject(s)
2nd grade students	Whole class (max. 30 students)	minimum 120 minutes	3 stages	natural sciences, visual arts, mathematics