NORTHGLENN — Bremma Priola stood behind her presentation and turned a dried mud clump over in her hands. She held it up and described how she molded it from white clay and wildflower seeds during her art class at STEM Launch in Thornton the week before.
"You mix the seeds with clay and a little water, and then you roll them into circles or little cylinders," said Priola, who is 8 years old. "Then you throw them anywhere. Then hopefully it rains, and then in a few weeks there will be flowers everywhere."
Priola set her example back in a hand basket full of identical "seed bombs" that she was handing out and pointed to a makeshift, wooden catapult near her display.
"Usually you don't have this thing around, you just throw the seed bombs yourself," she said. "It's a fun (project) because you have to get your hands dirty and then you make different places beautiful."
Students from STEM schools in the Adams 12 School District gathered at Northglenn High School to show off experiments in backyard gardening technology during a demonstration of spring STEAM projects April 16. The national STEAM program includes the traditional emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics but adds an art element.
Priola's project was an exercise in guerrilla gardening — an urban agriculture movement where people throw flower and herb seed bombs onto public land or city-owned property to make plants grow in fields of dirt and weeds.
"The weapon of the guerrilla gardener is the seed bomb," said Amanda Raker who is part of the STEM advisory council at Northglenn High.
Raker, a self-professed guerrilla gardener, had a station across from Priola where she was making seed bombs with red clay, compost and wildflower seeds. Children sat on the ground and mashed their fingers through the dirt batter and rolled it into balls of wet earth.
"This has been a special interest of mine for a while," Raker said. "I'm happy to see it integrated into curriculum like this, and I'm also happy that the kids seem to like it a lot."
A lot of the students' excitement was tied to the catapult, which was made by the father of one of the students. At the right time, art teacher Ali Hovan carried the contraption into the parking lot with a horde of excited second-graders in tow.
Each of the children took turns launching seed bombs from Priola's basket into the grassy field behind the baseball diamond on Northglenn's campus. They launched every single seed bomb, leaving none for guests to take home.
"It'll be neat when this entire area is covered in wildflowers in a couple months," Hovan said. "We're essentially beautifying this little space with nature."
Students in the Adams 12 STEAM program, which partners with the Thornton Arts and Culture Center, have held demonstrations of their work since last fall. Some of the projects included repurposing fabric for new clothing designs and using digital technology to compose music or create stories.
Ellen Piangerelli, arts and volunteer coordinator with the Thornton Arts and Culture Center said the injection of art into science- or math-driven projects has elevated each project in a unique way, expanding the base of advanced education for STEM students across the district.
Piangerelli said: "This is a chance for students to show the Thornton community their ingenuity and skills with the inventions and creations that they have developed."
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, or firstname.lastname@example.org
Go and see: The Thornton Arts and Culture Center will host a Maker's Faire at 1 p.m. May 3 at Northglenn High School, 601 W. 100th Place in Northglenn, to showcase the entire year's worth of projects that the STEM school students have done.