As learning institutions, museums are primed to help caretakers who suddenly find themselves trying to homeschool children during this pandemic. Many American museums have published resources to help their communities in crisis, including a huge number of smaller, local museums. What an amazing set of resources for even after the pandemic is over!
The BEST resource is definitely this page about distance learning by the American Alliance of Museums. It collects online learning materials from an absolute ton of museums, and allows you to search it using certain filters: age of user, guidance required, subject, etc. I had a ball looking through here and discovering some truly astounding gems:
- My top pick, hands down, is this video from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County for preschoolers: how to move like a spider endemic to southern California. It even overpowered my arachnid heebie-jeebies, that’s how great it is. Sure, it speaks to my Californian heart – but it is also so much fun, and teaches you about observing different kinds of local wildlife! Imagine doing this with a wee one and go ahead and try not to smile.
- The Job Carr Cabin Museum in Tacoma, Washington has some great worksheets for gradeschoolers. The one titled “Where was the Oregon Trail?” brought back fond memories of the OR Trail video game… But it is also well-designed to develop a variety of skills in a fun way.
- The Design Museum Foundation put out an exercise to design a chair for a customer with certain needs. It sounded a bit light at first, but the guiding questions reveal the complexities of the task. Great for working on real-life skills in realistic scenarios!
In addition, these websites are worth checking out:
- What a huuuuge catalog of museums with online learning resources! Categorized somewhat, but leaves you to do a lot of footwork on your own.
- Here is a roundup of art museum resources, including The Metropolitan Museum and MoMA.
- Te Papa Tongarewa in New Zealand has an incredible gallery of home-learning videos on many topics, in many formats, each labeled with the grade level it corresponds to in the NZ school system. Also, there is a large collection of online puzzles of images from the collections… feeding an addiction that I think many of us have developed during lockdown!
- Oakland Museum of California has posted a bushel and a peck of home learning options, including art projects that need not be just for kids!
- The Smithsonian offers an immense array of learning resources, of which this document seems to me the best starting point. I’m not sure why these pages are in Google Docs instead of integrated into the website, but that’s not a big deal.
This list is by no means exhaustive; it is just a tiny portion of the resources out there, selected by my own whimsy. I would love to hear about your own favorite resources for learning at home!
Have you discovered great homeschooling resources from museums? Share them in the comments below!