Adventures in Homeschooling / Web 2012 / Museum Scavenger Hunts, by Jennifer

Jul 5, 201211:59 PMAdventures in Homeschooling

Museum Scavenger Hunts, by Jennifer

I love living in Oklahoma, but I am not a fan of the heat, especially when I am dragging two kids and all the related gear.  We all know hot weather is here, so now is the time to plan for some fun ways to stay cool and maybe learn a little something while you’re doing it!

One of my favorite places to take the kids in the summer is the museum.  Priceless art has to be kept nice and cool with no humidity, and that’s my favorite kind of atmosphere!  We visit our local art museum, the Philbrook, at least once a month, so my kids are pretty familiar with it and I’m always looking for ways to get them to notice something new.  My latest idea was a scavenger hunt.  Philbrook does have a garden scavenger hunt as well as activity backpacks that can be checked out, but we visit so often that my kids have done these before—some more than once.  I wanted something new!

I’ve learned that when I have an idea, the first place to go is the internet, because chances are good that someone else has already had the same idea and made a cool printable for it.  When I googled “art museum scavenger hunt,” the first result was this article at Heart of the Matter.  I wasn’t able to download the list they provided, but with a three year old along for the fun, we wouldn’t have made it through the whole list anyway.  I chose a handful of the items they suggested and typed up a page for my son.  In a matter of minutes we were ready for the hunt!

When we arrived at the museum we took a few minutes to review the list and then made our way through the permanent collections looking for works of art that fit the criteria on our list.  Some of the pieces were ones my son knew already and some were ones that had escaped our notice before.  It took us about half an hour to complete our scavenger hunt and when we were done we had learned about some new (to us) pieces of art and we were still nice and cool!

If you are visiting a popular museum, try searching for scavenger hunts or guides made specifically for that site. MetroFamily has Field Guides for the Oklahoma City Museum of Art and the City Arts Center  (plus other fun venues!) that you can download and use today!  If there’s not one, use one of the generic lists that are out there or you could even have your kids help you make one. 

Happy—and cool—hunting!