Art STEAM Sculpture Project: Wire Metal Mobiles with Alexander Calder

Introduce your students to both wire and metal sculpting as they create mobiles! Get students excited about kinetic art, thinking about balance within their work, and connecting artwork to science. Students participate in an intro class activity with their peers as they learn about different forces at play within a balancing artwork. They think about Newton's first law of motion, consider the potential energy and kinetic energy of a kinetic sculpture, and then use their learning to create a hanging mobile of their own. After viewing Alexander Calder's work, they create 10 pendants with metal tooling foil and hang them using wire following a step-by-step tutorial. I have had students tell me this is their favorite project they've done because of the room for creativity and the beautiful outcome of the moving sculpture! The unit plan includes vocabulary, a rubric, a supply list, lesson objectives, and teacher instructions as well as step-by-step visual student instructions. Each step has detailed instructions and high quality photographs to ensure understanding. These are also super light and easy to hang for a beautiful display!

Visit the blog post about this project here.

What's Included:

• A PDF file including unit vocabulary, lesson objectives, a supply list, teacher instructions, and step-by-step visual student instructions
• A PowerPoint presentation for introducing the unit
• A PDF file rubric for easy printing
• A PNG file planning sheet for students to set goals and sketch out their project

Here's another wire sculpting project! Wire Insect Sculpting

I hope your students enjoy this project like mine have, let me know if you have any questions! Please take a moment to leave a review, it really helps!