Visit the Met at Home

Last month, my kids and I hosted a Bravewriter-style party school for the book, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. You can see the Michelangelo-inspired soap sculptures we made here. As part of the party, we decided to pretend like our guests were coming to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the main characters in the book were hid after running away.

The pictures of artwork on our walls were mostly ambience for our guests. Additionally, we set up a “Fountain of the Muses” filled with blue water beads were our guests could hunt for coins to spend at our “cafeteria.” I love the Bravewriter enchanted learning philosophy. These party school book clubs have been so much more engaging than book reports I did as a kid.

An unexpected advantage of our Mixed-Up Files party school was that my kids in particular learned a lot about famous artwork at the Met. We made hanging them up to decorate our house for the party into a big event. My kids took turns deciding which picture they wanted to hang up and where. (My hubby is not a big fan of holes in the wall, so we used Command Strip hooks and cheap picture frames.)

All in all, they learned about 12 different pieces of art currently on display at the Met. We left them up for a few weeks so that we would see them every day. Your family is more than welcome to use the images and display labels we made (free printable below). If your space is limited, you could rotate the images on display. Overall, I think this Met at Home activity was a pretty easy and inexpensive way to introduce a little art history into my kids’ lives.

Here are examples of some of the pieces we used:

Washington Crosses the Delaware at the Met

Recommended Age Range:Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~20 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Free printable, can display with or without out picture frames