Activities for Elementary School Groups

Guided tours for K-6 school groups include engaging activities that encourage creativity and expression. Activities are based on the museum’s current exhibits and may include hands-on art projects, a book reading, or writing responses. Activities offered through February 5, 2012 are listed below.

Teachers: click here to read how these activities connect to the K-6 curriculum.

GRADES K-1: Creativity with Shapes

This activity is so much fun because kids (and adults) can play while concepts of shape, size, color and figure & ground are strengthened. By moving shapes around on a large, colored ground, we introduce young children to design concepts such as repetition, variation, positive and negative space, and contrast. Each young artist learns a simple, no-mess way to apply glue to stick shapes down on the colored ground to create a design.

Green oak leaf with stitches.

Salley Mavor ~ Sewn Stories

Brown felt oak leaf with stitching.

Taking inspiration from Mavor’s hand-sewn fabric relief art, the activity for visitors and school groups is sewing decorative stitching onto felt leaves. Three shapes of leaves are offered: maple, oak, and birch in a variety of colors. Thread is variegated colored yarn. A booklet accompanying the exhibit gives simple step-by-step instructions for visitors. School groups receive hands-on instruction from BMAC staff.

When was sewing a part of a girl’s formal education?  Does anyone need to know how to sew by hand today?  This “gender neutral” activity may spark some interesting discussions about skills and history.

Learn more about Salley Mavor at her website:  www.weefolkstudio.com

Salley will be at BMAC from 3:00 – 4:30 p.m. on October 15, 2011 for a presentation on her work and a book-signing of her recent book,  Pocketful of Posies: A Treasury of Nursery Rhymes, during Brattleboro’s Literary Festival.