The Best Way to Plan a Visit to Local Museums with Your Montessori Students
By Spramani Elaun
Getting out of the classroom and visiting museums is essential for students to develop their art literacy. It also helps them grow in their understanding and appreciation of art. A Montessori art field trip can also be fun for both you and your students, if you know how to plan them correctly.
Art offers students a window for exploring the social, historical, and cultural context of works from their own county. I dive deeper in the importance of relating art to a greater context in my new book Defining Visual Arts, but museum visits are a key to implementing this concept.
Many Montessori teachers enjoy taking their students out to learn in new settings, many of them experience the issue of students not engaging with the art. They’re too busy on their phones, running around, or gabbing with friends. That’s because the way students learn doesn’t align with the way most art museums are set up.
While you can’t change a museum’s environment, you can change the way your students experience it. Here are 5 tips for planning a successful art trip with your Montessori students.
Tip #1: Introduce Museum Collections Before You Go
Explain what museum collections mean to our society, how we learn from them, and the significance they have to our broadening our perspectives and culture. Before you visit a museum, show them samples of different types of collections. For example, bones, insects, or gems from the Natural History Museum; plants from a Botanical Garden; or pottery and written relics from the Museum of Man. By sharing these examples before your class goes to a museum, your students will build up some excitement because they have an idea of how special this trip will be. You might even want to consider creating a lesson around a topic that’ll be featured at the museum. For instance, if you’re going to have older students view classical paintings, be sure they have experience and knowledge on the era. Or your lesson can be as simple as a 15-minute Q & A with your students the day before your trip.
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Tip #2: Review Museum Restrictions
Explain and review museum restrictions and rules and why they’re important to follow. Teach kids museum observation skills: collecting information with their eyes, listening with their ears, and observing studying artifacts with their hands safely behind their backs. You can even do a run-through in your classroom before your field trip. Put out a few objects as a pretend collection in your classroom, then have students walk around with their hands behind their backs. Remind them of how precious many of the collections and items at the museum are, and why it’s important to observe them in this way.
Tip #3: Choose the Right Museums
Choose a museum with collections and ideas that relate to subjects your students will be learning. For example, if you’re focusing on botany then check out your local Botanical Gardens, if want to highlight what they’re learning in history then visit a history museum, if you’re studying the cosmos then take a trip to a planetarium, observatory, or science museum. Most large cities have historical societies and special collections that will most likely support one of the subjects you’re teaching in the classroom. I’m lucky I live near San Diego and Balboa Park, which has so many wonderful museums, like a train museum, quilt museum, butterfly sanctuary, and even farms with petting zoos. Trust me, if you do your research, you’ll find something that’ll engage your students and bring their learning to life.
Tip #4: Look for Interactive Exhibits
Finding a museum that’ll relate to students’ studies will automatically spark their interest to some degree, but you can take it a step further by going to a museum with kid-friendly, interactive exhibits. You might also want to look for places that allow kids to touch the displays, where talking is acceptable, and that provide an area for restless movement. A designated lunch area and outdoor space will also make the trip more enjoyable for your students.
You can also provide ways to kind of force your students to engage, such as giving them a scavenger hunt to complete, or ways to collect data like sketch book, journal, or camera.
Tip #5: Plan for their Attention Spans
Ultimately, you have to set realistic expectations of what to count on from your students. Understand what their attention spans typically are and plan for breaks and activities throughout the day. For example, I know I can’t expect my students to make it through lengthy docent tours, so I tend to skip those. Instead, I’ll choose museums with hands-on activities, or create my own interesting exercises for them to do. When I take my older students on field trips, I prepare them with sketch pencils and journals for follow-up work that they can later fill out after they collect information about the different subjects they observed during their visit. The goal is to make your museum trips exciting for younger students and interesting for older students.
If you want more information on the best ways to teach art and make it exciting for your Montessori students (and you!) make sure you register for my online course, Art Teaching Blueprint! I give you all the tools, resources, and information you need to build the foundation for a quality visual arts program.
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