It’s summertime and we’re seeing a lot of families visiting the museum. The littlest visitors have been really enjoying the exhibitions, especially The Salon for Possible Futures!

We welcome visitors of all ages, and for our preschool visitors, here are some things we provide to enrich their visits:

Games! The Salon has games already in it, and the one pictured here is a game that was made custom for the exhibition by Sally Paul. The large wooden blocks with simple shapes on each side are perfect for open-ended play.

Tip: keep in mind that kids 3 and under often are still in the parallel play stage of development and not yet ready to play interactively, which means they’ll each want their own blocks and won’t want to build something together. With this group, I had one child who was in parallel play mode and other children who played interactively. It works fine as long as you remind everyone that we need to share the blocks, even if we don’t want to build something together.

We have touchable objects that relate to specific works (note how the children are seated in the galleries) such as dog tags, jingle beads, beaded canvas and examples of different paint textures. Kids LOVE having these opportunities to touch materials.

Storybooks are a great way to get kids engaged and focused on the art! Stopping at several works and having everyone seated on the floor listening to a storybook can help the group calm down in an exciting environment (being at the museum is exciting!)

Mouse Paint is fun for kids 3-5years old to talk about colors and color mixing. We also have color-mixing tubes which the kids love shaking up to see what colors are created. It’s important that everyone gets a turn.

Note how the reader in this video is supplementing the text by asking questions and encouraging interaction. It helps to practice reading the book several times, and to remember that the kids all want to see the pictures, so taking time to show every illustration to everyone is essential!

We can also be color investigators, using colored lenses to see how artworks look different through different colors and overlapping them.

And at the end of the tour, when everyone has had plenty of time to look and play, we can spend some time making art! We have finger crayons and crayons that can be used with a palm grip, and coloring pages and stickers featuring works by Dyani White Hawk and others.

Finally we have some goodies visitors can take home at the end, including postcards and bookmarks featuring artworks from the exhibitions, as well as zines and some of the other fun things in the cabinet drawers of The Salon.