Plan a Family Trip to The Art Institute of Chicago
This past weekend, our Fine Arts Program organized a field trip to The Art Institute of Chicago—one of the world's most famous museums. We saw this trip as an opportunity to expose our students to various types of art from diverse cultures, and use student interest and curiosity as a starting point for exploration. It is one of our goals here at AUAF to broaden student perspectives of both art and the world. We hoped our trip would inspire them to understand significance in various types of artworks.
Check out a highlight video from our trip.
If you've ever taken your child to a museum, you certainly know just as well as we do that it's difficult to keep children engaged (and quiet) for long periods of time when they've got nothing to do. We created an easy scavenger hunt activity for our students which kept them on the look out for select paintings, and asked questions designed to help students unveil meaning in each one. They really enjoyed it! As you can see in the above video, it retained their interest and kept them focused the whole way through (phew).
The Art Institute has so much to offer kids and families. Children under the age of 14 are admitted free of charge. Download our Art Institute scavenger hunt activity for your family trip. We recommend only taking pencils (just to be safe), and be sure to give the kids something to write on (we used mini-clipboards).
Tip: General admission to The Art Institute is free for Illinois residents every Thursday from 5:00pm to 8:00pm.
Click to download AUAF's Art Institute Scavenger Hunt (PDF).
Here are The Art Institute of Chicago galleries that you will have to visit in order to complete our activity:
Additional Resources