A trip to a museum isn’t always as exciting as children might like. And it can be hard to keep them quiet and interested.  My suggestion? A seek and find game. Don’t encourage speed by saying anything like “whoever finds these first…” I prefer to go with the more relaxed “see if we can find all of these exhibits by the time we leave”.

 

Go online ahead of your visit and try to pull some images off the museum website. You can print them onto a bingo card type format or make a simple checklist. Make sure each child has a copy. If you’re able to locate enough pictures online, make a card for each child with different images. Then take it slowly as you work your way through the exhibits and see if you can find them all. Don’t point out any exhibits or prompt them. Let them find them on their own. But if you’re heading out of an area and they have missed an item or 2, you can prompt a review of the space with “check your list one more time before we leave here. Did we miss anything?”

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Another art game my kids enjoyed (where cameras are allowed) is to play “Life imitates Art”. They would stand next to a painting or sculpture and do their best to mimic the pose or expression and we’d snap a quick picture. Outdoor sculpture gardens are usually safe for this type of activity. Even sculptures that were modern and mostly shapes or welded objects seemed to inspire the kids to contort themselves in a similar fashion. We ended up doing a 4H photography project on this. 

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After your trip to the museum, have the kids explore their own interpretation of any work of art they saw. If you can’t take pictures at the gallery, you can probably find images online to use as your guide. You might want to write down the official title of a piece and its artist to make searching online for it easier. Sculpture, paintings, mosaics- see if you can create your own masterpieces in the style of what your saw on your tour.