Your class or tour is finished and you look back wondering, “What did they take away from our time together? Will they remember any of it tomorrow? Will they recall this lesson in connection with a future experience?” As a docent or interpreter, you studied your collection and practiced touring. …
He was quite interested in his child’s welfare. As a matter of fact, the young father of one of our kindergarten children had taken a day off from his job in order to come to school to discuss a trip he was planning. As he explained his desire to take his daughter …
It’s opening day of a new, costly exhibition on natural disasters. Adults meander through the displays, reading copy, pushing buttons, discussing information with their companions, and drawing conclusions about what they’ve seen. In one corner of the exhibition, however, a couple struggles with their four-year-old daughter. She has discovered a …
When youngsters handle artifacts in a historical museum, the past comes alive and becomes accessible. To turn kids on at our museum, the Tippecanoe County Historical Association (TCHA) uses an expendable collection and reproductions for its handling materials. The collection includes such items as: fossils, projectile points, stone tools, bone …
For nearly 30 years, the Houston Museum of Natural Science has collaborated with the Junior League of Houston, Inc. in a science box outreach program for children with special needs — children for whom it would be difficult to come to the Museum on a field trip. The Junior League …
Teaching Tips In their brochure Sharing Science with Children: A Survival Guide for Scientists and Engineers, the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science in Durham, N.C., offers the following noteworthy tips for those who teach youngsters. Make eye contact with the students because they love the personal contact. Smile …
Right from the Start is the title Of the National Association of State Boards of Education report on Early Childhood Education, and is one of those wonderful phrases that expresses multiple meanings simultaneously. (Everybody Counts, the title of a report on the future of mathematics education by the National Council …
While our youngest visitors Mc not any more difficult to teach than older students and adults, they do require a different approach. The youngest visitors toured by docents at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are at the prekindergarten and kindergarten levels (4 to 6-year-olds). They arrive as part of a school …
In The Arctic Museum by William Logan, Mildred Jones, and Judy Higbea Pre-schoolers who visit The Peary- MacMillan Arctic Museum for guided tours are 3-year-olds (in groups of six to eight) and 4- and 5-year-olds (in groups up to ten or twelve). All have adults chaperoning them on their half-hour …
How can I get and keep their attention on the exhibits?” and “How can I make this meaningful?” are questions that confront docents, teachers, and parents as they participate in museum visits with young children. Good answers to these two questions mean you won’t find yourself asking “How can I …
Whether teaching little ones is your preference or not, one can hardly dispute our responsibility as educators to these, our youngest visitors. It is aphoristic that the greater the dependency of the learner, the greater the importance of the educator. This may be one reason why classroom instructors who teach …