Museums Lesson Plans

Fifth graders explore museum pieces to identify how color expresses emotion and cultural identity.  For this museum lesson, 5th graders go on a field trip and record how color is used in masks.  Students relate colors to various cultures.  Students complete a color worksheet, and thank you letters.

By working cooperatively, writers will create a newspaper about the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Each member will take on a different role representing various types of newspaper writers. They will discover the history, exhibits, special collections, and services offered by the museum. Adaptation: This activity could be altered to represent another museum.

Students create presidential presentations. In this presidential lesson, students research a president and create their own museum presentation for that president. They create a script or brochure and make costumes.

Students create a museum exhibit of foreign coins.  In this money lesson, students share their foreign coins during the morning meeting. Students recognize the value and the country the coins come from.

Second graders participate utilizing a variety of resources such as fiction and nonfiction literature, artifacts, photographs and diaries to establish information about daily life and jobs that existed in the past. They create living history museum displays by role-playing showing how people made a living in the past.

Students explore art at an art museum. In this instructional activity about art, students travel to a museum and explore the art. Students practice drawing, search for certain kinds of art, and learn about reproducing art by someone else. Students will have a better overall understanding of art.

Students develop and organize their own transportation museum in the classroom. They brainstorm a list of vehicles and bring in models to display or draw a picture to display.

Students compare a picture of the Denver Art Museum's North Building to castles.  In this observation lesson, students compare the North Building to castles they have seen in photos, and use building blocks to build their own castles.  A photo and background information on the building is included at the end of the lesson.

Tenth graders create an African Art Museum. Each group present art and information about that art on your wall of the museum.

Students engage in a lesson designed to be used before visiting The Orange County Museum of Art in California. They are exposed to works of art from a featured artist and recreate some of his work in the classroom. Students also conduct research into the life of the artist to have information before visiting the gallery.