San Francisco's de Young and Legion of Honor Museums introduce new learning resources for parents to share with children and students, grades K-8

The de Young and Legion of Honor Museums offer learning and activity resources not as prompts to bring parents and young learners joy, wonder, and respite from the everyday routine.

• The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco are the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums. In reflecting on their commitment to cultivating curious and resilient mindsets, the museums have assembled resources around three central skills: Look, Explore, and Create, specifically for children and students in grades K-8.

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• The museums hope these material ideas may provide quick and tangible ways to integrate the museum collections into parent lesson plans and activities for their children and students while they shelter in place.

de Young Museum

Legion of Honor Museum

From the museums' information pages:

Look:
All the explorations at the de Young and Legion of Honor begin with close looking. Creating time and space to share our observations and develop interpretations provides an opportunity to consider multiple points of view rather than finding a single correct answer. Our K–3rd-grade Learning to Look materials integrate Visual Thinking Strategies to develop rich vocabulary, student-generated interpretations, and improved writing skills.

You can quickly incorporate these techniques by exploring a work of art using the following questions:

• What is happening in this work of art?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can you find?

View Materials
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Explore:
The context of an artwork expands the connections students can make to what they are learning in school and to their own lived experiences. In creating our 4th–8th-grade Get Smart with Art curriculum, we developed resources that put the historical context in the hands of our students so that they can analyze, question, and interpret works of art. When exploring the history behind artwork, ask questions that help students analyze the information.

• How does the information change the way you look at the work of art?
• What perspective or point of view does the work of art represent?
• What information do you think is most important to share with someone else?

View Materials


Create:
​Discover new artwork via our permanent collection Discovery Guides. These short, open-ended activities spark conversation and invite creativity as you look together.

Here is one to try: choose a window to look out of, paying special attention to the basic shapes you see and the noises you hear. What kinds of lines show these shapes and noises best? Try combining the sights and sounds into a drawing, and reflect on how these change during the day.
View A Discovery Guide