Mornings at the Museums: A Family Friendly Early Childhood Program

ABSTRACT

The pilot program, Morning at the Museum (MAM), was offered to children (ages 3–5) and their caregivers weekly for six weeks at the Reynolda House Museum of American Art (RHMAA). Both children and adults explored RHMAA through hands-on activities that encouraged play, movement, observation, music, and art-making. Each session explored a theme (shapes, color, farm, etc.), woven into sensory play, the featured artwork of the day, story time, spaces in the historic house, and an art-making experience. Through MAM, RHMAA used educationally defined ingredients to create a developmentally appropriate learning experience spanning two age groups, young children and adults, with the goal of fostering a lifelong interest in museum learning and attendance.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood programing
• family learning
• program evaluation
• art education
• museum education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Naomi Lifschitz-Grant is Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. Her research focuses on arts integration, how the arts can serve as a tool to build community and bolster parent involvement in schools and early childhood education and the arts.

ORCID

Naomi Lifschitz-Grant http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6193-3769

Notes

1 Goble, Wright, and Patron, “Museum Babies,” 40–7.

2 Weier, “Empowering Young Children,” 106–16.

3 Herz, Looking at Art, 7.

4 Roger et al., “Promising Findings on Preschooler,” 111–22.

5 Knutson and Crowley, “Connecting with Art,” 2–24; Goble, Wright, and Patron, “Museum Babies,” 40–7; Borun, “Why Family Learning,” 6–9.

6 In this paper, family learning is defined as intergenerational learning between children and their caregivers.

7 Dierking, “Laughing and Learning,” http://www.familylearning forum.org/.

8 Knutson and Crowley, “Connecting with Art,” 2–24.

9 Knutson et al., “Approaching Art Education,” 310–22.

10 Weier, “Empowering Young Children,” 106–16.

11 Copple and Bredekamp, Developmentally Appropriate Practices; Piaget, Understand Is to Invent; Dewey, Experience and Education.

12 Vygotsky, Mind in Society, 86.

13 “Experiential Learning.”

14 Shaffer, “Early Learning,” 11–16.

15 Porter, “Investments.”

16 Rice and Yenawine, “Conversation on Object-Centered Learning,” 289–99.

17 Shaffer, “Opening the Doors,” 42.

18 Burton, Guide for Teaching.

19 Eisner, “Role of Art,” 43–56.

20 Gaskin, “Designing Exhibitions,” 11–18.

21 Borun, “Why Family Learning,” 9.

22 NAEYC, “NAEYC Standards,” 12.

23 Weier, “Empowering Young Children,” 106–16.

24 Dierking, “Laughing and Learning.”