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Pre-Visit Activities
- Museum Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10am to 5pm. Café Flo hours: 11:30am to 2:30pm, Tues-Sun.
Activities
The Museum has developed several tools to assist teachers in preparing their students for a visit to the Museum. Please consider using the following:
The Fox Chase and In Situ
Encourage your students to explore the Museum’s web sections, The Fox Chase: A Race Into History and In Situ: The Painted Panels to generate excitement and enthusiasm before the field trip.
Read The Story of Miss Florence
Read The Story of Miss Florence and the Lyme Art Colony aloud to your students and ask them what questions they might want to ask during their visit. A copy of is available in the Teacher Resources section.
Illustrate
Have your students illustrate one of the big ideas in The Story of Miss Florence and the Lyme Art Colony. Combine the images for a classroom book or hang a gallery of drawings in the classroom.
Play "The Wiggle Game"
Play the wiggle game, the drawing game that was popular with the artists of the Lyme Art Colony. See the Wiggles & Giggles lesson plan in the Lesson Plans section of the Teacher Resources and visit the wiggle drawing gallery in the Teacher Resources.
Wiggles & GigglesWatch "A Certain Light"
View the Museum’s introductory video, A Certain Light, with your students. Although geared for a general audience, this twelve minute DVD tells the story Miss Florence and the Artists of Old Lyme. Contact Mollie Clarke at (860) 434-5542, ext. 113 or mollie@flogris.org to get your loan copy.
Talk About Museum Manners
Brainstorm about ways to behave when visiting a museum. A list of manners is available in the Museum Manners section. Discuss why each rule is important.
Museum MannersView the Online Learning Portfolios
Explore the various learning portfolios in the Teacher Resources section. Have the students describe what they see and make a list of questions about the objects and images.
Teacher ResourcesAdopt an Artist
Have the students “adopt” one of the artists in The Fox Chase and become the expert on that person. Have them share information by completing the sentence, “The most interesting thing about [insert name of artist, for example “Childe Hassam”] is that he/she…” Encourage the students to be on the look out for art by their artist during their visit.
The Fox ChaseForm Research Groups
Divide the class into small research groups to develop student roles as “specialists” on a certain topic. Use this website as the starting point for your research. Some suggested topics are:
The Lyme Art Colony
American Impressionism
Boardinghouses in America
Tonalism
Painting En Plein Air
Who was Miss Florence?