Lesson Plans and Pre-visit Guides

Current search results within: Grade, Elementary School

• 19th-Century European Painting (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the range of artistic styles that developed in response to a period of profound social, political, and cultural transformation, including Neoclassicism, Romanticism, and Impressionism. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Animal-Inspired Masks and Masquerades (Lesson Plan)

  Help students understand the connections between art and the environment of Guinea, animal anatomy, and the cultural context of the Banda mask with the help of viewing questions and a dance activity in the Museum's African Art galleries.

• Armor—Function and Design (Lesson Plan)

  Identify moveable and static features of armor as well as functional and symbolic surface details and examine similarities and differences between human and animal "armor" through classroom viewing questions. Enhance the lesson with a sketching activity based on an English suit of armor in the Museum's collection.

• Art of Ancient Egypt (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the art of ancient Egypt, made primarily for religious and magical purposes and reflective of the culture's desire for order, beliefs about eternity, and love of life. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, themes to consider, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Art of the American Wing (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to American art from the early colonial period through World War I. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery maps, tour-planning guidelines, recommendations for engaging students with works of art in the galleries, and suggested works of art to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Art of the Americas (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the roots of civilization in the ancient Americas through Precolumbian art created mainly for ceremonial and ritual purposes. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, themes to consider, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Art of the Ancient Near East (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to works of art reflecting the rich and complex cultures that flourished for thousands of years across a vast geographical region and gave rise to many features of modern civilization. Use the guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, background information and themes, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to one of the most comprehensive collections of Islamic art in the world, including both secular and religious works created in a broad range of media over a vast geographic expanse from the seventh to late nineteenth century. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery descriptions, tour-planning tips, discussion questions, suggested works of art, teaching themes, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Engaging the Elements (Lesson Plan)

  Engage students' interest in the relationships between the human and natural worlds, and art and the environment through a mask-making activity and viewing questions for the classroom about a mask from Alaska in the Museum's Native North American collection.

• European Paintings (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to depictions of the classical world, genre works, landscapes, and still lifes created amid the religious, political, and intellectual shifts in Renaissance through the eighteenth-century Europe. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Gods, Goddesses, and the Supernatural (Lesson Plan)

  Enrich students' understanding of how the ancient Assyrians used art to convey messages through a classroom writing and art-making activity and viewing questions related to a monumental sculpture in the Museum's Ancient Near East collection.

• Haremhab—General and Scribe (Lesson Plan)

  Capture students' imaginations in the Egyptian galleries with viewing questions about a sculpture portrait and an observation activity about analyzing portraits, relationships between art and cultural values, and the ways different communities communicate through images and text.

• Medieval Beasts and Bestiaries (Lesson Plan)

  Explore the use of animals as symbols in medieval art with viewing questions and a group drawing activity at The Cloisters or in the classroom.

• Modern and Contemporary Art (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the effects that industrialization, mechanization, and massive population shifts to cities had on art, as well as the rise of abstraction, formalism, and art that employs new media and technologies. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, themes to consider, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• Take It to the Afterlife (Lesson Plan)

  Delve into daily life and the afterlife in ancient Egypt, as well as strategies for visual analysis and interpretation of art, through viewing questions and a sketching activity in the Museum's Egyptian galleries.

• The Art of Africa (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the heritage of cultures south of the Sahara through works of art imbued with social, religious, and political significance. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, background information, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• The Art of Ancient Greece and Rome (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to Greek and Roman art from the Neolithic period to the time of Constantine the Great, representing virtually every medium in which ancient artists and craftsman worked. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, background information and themes, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• The Art of China (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the primary ideas, values, and traditions of one of the world's oldest continuous civilizations, as reflected in one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of its art in the West. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, background information and themes, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• The Art of Medieval Europe (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the art of the Middle Ages, notable for its expressions of beauty, complexity and importance of meaning, and establishment of new standards for technical achievement. Use this guide's collection overview, gallery map, tour-planning guidelines, themes to consider, discussion questions, suggested works of art, and resource list to make the most of your trip to the Museum.

• The Arts of Japan (Pre-visit Guide)PDF

  Introduce students to the range of styles, formats, and subjects that have characterized Japanese art over the centuries. Use this guide's collection and gallery overviews, tour-planning tips, recommendations for engaging students, suggested themes and works of art, and list of resources to make the most of your visit to the Museum.

• The Burghers of Calais (Lesson Plan)

  Convey the interpretive significance of pose and expression in the visual arts—in the Museum or the classroom—with viewing questions and a story-writing activity inspired by a nineteenth-century French sculpture by Auguste Rodin.

• The Chinese Garden Court (Lesson Plan)

  Explore the Museum's Chinese garden court and enhance students' understanding of how traditional Chinese gardens reflect the concept of yin and yang and how material selection and design can convey ideas about the human and natural worlds. Use viewing questions and a storytelling or drawing activity in the Museum's Chinese galleries.

• The Nomads of Central Asia—Turkmen Traditions (Lesson Plan)

  Students will be able to identify ways art of the Turkmen people of Central Asia reflects nomadic life and understand the functional and symbolic role objects play in their lives.

• The Story in Art (Lesson Plan)

  Develop students' abilities to analyze and employ narrative elements in art with in-classroom viewing questions about a work in the Museum's European paintings collection and a story-writing and illustrating activity.

• Voices of the Past (Lesson Plan)

  Focus on a slit gong in the Museum's Oceanic collection to illustrate the impact of scale in works of art, and consider objects' functions in their original contexts and ways different communities engage with their elders and ancestors. Classroom viewing questions and an oral history activity enhance the lesson.