Sometimes, going to the art museum does not mean taking a field trip.
The Kennedy Museum of Art's Museums by Mail program offers educators the opportunity to incorporate artwork into normal classroom activities. The program began when the museum opened in October 1996, said Sally Delgado, curator of education for the museum. Teachers have the opportunity to borrow Museum by Mail exhibits for a two-week period.
The exhibits, which are packaged in suitcases, include matted artwork, information on the artwork, suggestions for incorporating it into classroom activities and related books or magazines. The 20 Museum by Mail exhibitions include artwork by local and national artists, as well as Athens-area students.
It's a way to connect with the community
to take the museum outside the walls of the museum Delgado said.
The museum has a mailing database of more than 1,300 teachers and schools in Ohio and West Virginia, Delgado said.
The program provides many local students the opportunity to see works of art that they might not otherwise have an opportunity to see.
For the kids it's a huge advantage because they get to see so many types of artwork and then they get to use it
said April Louthain, a second-grade teacher at West Elementary in Athens.
Pam Cornn, a fifth-grade teacher at West Elementary, learned about the museum program through the mail. She has used exhibits in her class's curriculum through writing and discussion.
We do class discussion with them. It's really much easier to bring the art to the students than to try to schedule a field trip and take the students over there for the short time that they would be there. They get to view them longer
Cornn said.
Louthain also incorporates the Museum by Mail exhibits into classroom activities. Her students enjoyed the program so much that they wanted to contribute their own artwork to it.
Last year
we checked out Museum by Mail exhibits from the museum. We checked out one each month. One of my students asked
'Why can't we do this? We're really good artists
' Louthain said.
Louthain's students teamed with the museum to create an exhibit of poetry and artwork titled, A Snowflake's Life. The collection includes 18 snowflakes paired with poetry written in I AM format. The students worked with the art teacher at West Elementary and an Ohio University student employee at the museum to create the exhibit.
We were very open and flexible to what they would come up with after we established that it would be curriculum based
Delgado said. To incorporate the project into the curriculum, Louthain's class wrote poetry to be included in the exhibit and studied vocabulary words on snowflakes.
Delgado said that the program tries to add at least one new exhibit each year. Louthain's students contributed to the program's most recent addition.
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