The Museum of Art & History at the McPherson Center

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Educator Resources

Boy painting

The Museum offers a wide range of educational resources that enable teachers to enhance their students’ learning at the Museum and in the classroom. There is a $10 charge for checking out the art boxes, history trunks and costume kits.

Girl painting

Art Box – Bring Art to your classroom by borrowing a Art Box!

Art boxes bring students face to face with the magic of exploring real art works on the exciting topic of Outdoor Landscape Painting. Students learn the history of this art movement and observe light, color and perspective. The Art Box features art lesson plans with six original art works by local artists, and the art supplies to bring art into your classroom!

If you’re interested in checking out the Art Box for a two-week or one-month period, please call (831) 429-1964 x. 7020 or email education@santacruzmah.org. 

History Trunks and Costume Kits

Bring MAH into your classroom with our thematic Trunks and Costume Kits! These materials enable students of all grade levels to experience history and artifacts found at MAH. Costume Kits are ideal for school plays, pioneer days, and much more. History Trunk topics include Native American Lifestyle, Old Schoolhouse, Chinese American History, Turn of the Century Home Life and much more! Trunks are available for weekly check out. Call the Education Department at (831) 429-1964 x 7020 or education@santacruzmah.org to schedule to bring a thematic trunk to your classroom.

 

 

  • Anonymous

    Valencia Elementary (Aptos) has three third grade classes who would like to come to the History Focused School Tours.u00a0 We each have 30 students.u00a0 Friday is our best day.u00a0 We would need to finish by 1:00 p.m. Could we schedule all three tours on one day (back to back)?u00a0 Teachers are:u00a0 Rick Lober, Liz Wise, and Jan Swanson.u00a0 (I plan to set up the field trips for all three classes.)u00a0 Please get back to me.u00a0 Thanks, Jan Swanson

  • Jeff Caplan

    Art and History Trunks are a great way to inspire Language Development in Elementary Schools.

    My fourth grade class borrowed a trunk for California History, on the Old School House. I asked each group of three students to pick an item, and then try to get us to “buy it”….even if they didn’t know what it was! Everyone was excited, and worked hard to use their language skills to convince us we couldn’t live without the mystery item. I took notes and designed future structured language lessons to improve their skills.