Art Appreciation for Kids: Museums

Art appreciation is an essential for any child’s education, but often taking kids to art museums can prove to be a challenge! Here are some great ideas for visiting art museums with kids, including information on wonderful art museums all around the world.

This post is a proud part of the upcoming Multicultural Children’s Book Day. For more details, read my interview with its founders and watch for the big event on January 27!

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of Adventures in Asian Art for review purposes; however, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a purchase, I receive a small commission.

Art Appreciation for Kids: Museums

We are lucky enough to live near the renowned Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, so I was excited to receive the wonderful children’s book Adventures in Asian Art: An Afternoon at the Museum from Tuttle Publishing.

This beautiful volume is a fun way to introduce children to Asian art and to get them excited about visiting an art museum! The Asian Art Museum contains more than 18,000 artifacts, including many historical pieces from all over Asia. Adventures in Asian Art: An Afternoon at the Museum showcases 53 of these, giving kids a taste of the variety of regions, time periods, and types of art that can be found at the museum. (Find even more in the museum’s online collection).

I love the adorable characters featured in the book – three young children at the museum for an afternoon adventure: “Around the world and back again / Let’s go and look and see!”

The text includes gentle rhymes about exploring the museum, in addition to separate boxes (with different font) that give more information and ask the children questions to get them thinking about the exhibits and how they might relate to their own lives. For example, one page spread features a print from Japan that shows children catching fireflies: “The two young people trying to capture fireflies in their nets are wearing the latest summertime fashions of their day. What would you wear to catch fireflies?”

I highly recommend this lovely work for parents and teachers as a way to teach art appreciation by getting kids excited about art and visiting a museum. If you are using this in the classroom or homeschool, you can find more detailed information about the included pieces in the opening and ending pages.

Below are activities to do with kids while visiting an art museum, plus reccomended art museums to visit around the world!

Art Museum Activities

From Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: Museum Scavenger Hunt Printable in Spanish
From Mosswood Connections: Art Museum Activities for Kids
From Fantastic Fun and Learning: Books about Artists, Art, and Museums
From 3 Dinosaurs: Museum Shape Search with Free Printable
From 3 Dinosaurs: Things to Do When Visiting an Art Museum
From Wise Owl Factory: Art Museum Question to Ask Children
From Buggy and Buddy: Using a Journal at the Art Museum
From Edventures with Kids: Kids and Musems – 5 Tips for Your Next Visit
From Mother Natured: 10 Wildlife Art Gallery Activities
From Trilingual Mama: Museums and Bilingual Kids
From Bright Ideas Press: Visting Art Galleries and Unit Studies

Art Museums to Visit

From the piri-piri lexicon: Le Louvre
From MarocMama: The Vatican
From Raising a Trilingual Child: The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
From Bambini Travel: Mississippi Museum of Art
From Discovering the World Through My Son’s Eyes: I.P. Stanback Museum, Orangeburg, South Carolina
From Open Wide the World: Chicago’s 5 Best Museums You’ve Never Heard of
From Bambini Travel: Milwaukee Art Museum
From Little Hiccups: The Broad Art Museum, Los Angeles
From Little Hiccups: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
From Fantastic Fun and Learning: Favorite Children’s Museums and Online Resources