Another idea relating to making it as "real" as possible would be coming up
with a list of "resources" including but not limited to:
local galleries
local museums
speakers (i.e. the (house)painter in your community that does 'faux' work,
the local arts council, the local college art students-I had a decoy carver
and puppeteer come speak, both local)
online sources that are "kid friendly"
If you don't want to make this list part of your long term project, I still
would urge the students to make up a list prior to teaching. Perhaps just
making a form for them to keep to add these resources to would be enough.
(i.e. organization, address, phone number, contact person, expertise).