Art Field Trip

Art Field Trip: My grandchildren are home schooled and I’m their art teacher. Usually they come over on Tuesday mornings at 8:30 and we do artful things until about 11:30.  My art studio is in a converted garage and is heated with a wood stove. The room has lots of windows and wonderful light. A couple of weeks ago it was so cold that I didn’t think the wood stove would get it heated enough to have the kids out there for 3 hours so I decided to take them on a field trip.

I looked online for the Portland Art Museum, www.portlandartmuseum.org, and found out that their Museum hours would work great for my class time. The kids wouldn’t be home by 11:30 but that was ok with their mom.

We drove down and parked across the street in a privately owned parking lot. It cost more than street parking but it was closer to walk on a cold day.  When we arrived the kids were excited and noticed all the outdoor statues and displays around the museum.

We got our tickets and entered the museum. Right inside the museum was a large (about 40 foot) curved screen showing a digital fly-over movie of some cities in China. We sat through it and enjoyed it a lot. It flew over the place where the Olympics were held and hot air balloons were shown rising out of the stadium.

After we finished with the movie we talked to one of the staff that were around to help us. She suggested that we start at the top of the building and work our way down. She pointed the way to the elevator.

The top couple floors held Pacific Northwest Native American art, masks, and different things. The kids liked looking at it and we tried to figure out how old things might be. I don’t think our Native Americans kept time in the way that we did so it was interesting to figure that out too.

We walked throughout the Museum. We found paintings, figures, and many forms of art. It was all displayed very beautifully with explanations cards close by. On the main floor were examples of Chinese art on chests, figures and pottery.

In the basement were displays to see and then you walked over to another building that held the Modern Art pieces. This gave the kids a whole different view of art. Some were really strange and creative. Like a TV with clay formations on it.

The children were well behaved. There were several classes of fifth grade children in the museum that day as well. There was another exhibition you could pay to go into, Raphael: The Woman with the Veil. But I decided that just the regular museum was great for our field trip.

When we left we stopped at Denny’s at Janzen Beach Mall for lunch. Then we went to Craft Warehouse where we picked out a gift to make.

The Portland Art Museum is a good place to take children. Patrick at age 6 enjoyed the displays and didn’t try to run off on his own. It might be harder with younger children.  Kids under 18 are free so we just had to pay for my ticket.

It was a fun day – the kid’s mom said they talked about it a lot after they got home and had really enjoyed it. So did I. Portland Art Museum – Adults $12 Seniors $9 Children 17 and younger $0 The memories? Priceless.

I’m sure I don’t know all of the fun things to do or places to take kids in our area – if you have a suggestion and we use it in an article you will receive a prize.  Logon to our website and fill in the suggestion box.  Past articles are listed there as well. www.gottabefun.com/bugler.htm