Grades/Level: Lower Elementary (K–2), Upper Elementary (3–5)
Subjects: Visual Arts, English–Language Arts
Time Required: Short Activity
1 1/2 – 3 3/4 hours
Author: J. Paul Getty Museum Education Staff

Activity Overview

Take your students on an imaginary vacation at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center. Six activities allow students to visit various places, meet a variety of people, and take home a souvenir. They will practice writing about, observing, and sketching works of art.

Learning Objectives

Students should be able to:
• make specific written and drawn observations of details in a work of art.
• interpret meaning in a work of art, in writing.
• write a unique story based upon visual evidence in a painting.

Materials

• Six activities — download them individually, or all together
• Itinerary
• Sample Itinerary

Activity Steps

1. Review the six activities and choose galleries you would like to visit for each. Choose 3-4 of these activities for your class. You may use the Sample Itinerary, or choose galleries you saw during your Getty Center Teacher Orientation Workshop. Students will choose an artwork in each gallery on their own to write about or draw.

2. Use the Itinerary sheet to create itineraries for your students. Each chaperoned group will do four of the six activities in a different order. Each group does Beginning Your Journey first, and Send a Postcard last. You can delete activities if you need to.

3. Print out and make photocopies of all activity sheets for each student.

Below is a description of each activity:

Beginning Your Journey — Students look closely at a painting by imagining they are a traveler in the picture and answering questions about what they would see and feel.

Art is for Your 5 Senses — Students pick a painting and imagine what they would hear, see, feel, smell, and taste if they were inside the work of art.

Prose Poem — Students follow writing prompts to create an original poem about a work of art.

Find a Souvenir — Students sketch a detail of a work of art.

News Bulletin — Students pretend they are newspaper journalists who have come upon a scene in a painting. They write a story for tomorrow's paper describing the "who, what, why, and where" of the scene.

Send a Postcard — Students write a postcard to a friend or family member, telling them about their trip to the Getty.