Directions

Reinforce student museum learning and experiences with the Mini Gallery Guide. Following their visit to one or more galleries of the museum, have students make mini travel brochures for future visitors. Give the completed Mini Gallery Guides to parents or to students scheduled for a future field trip or use for a bulletin board display.

Distribute copies of the Mini Gallery Guide [PDF]. Ask students to fill in each panel of the blank "brochure" with pictures and information about their favorite gallery. Tell students to put their interesting experiences into the brochure so that whoever uses the brochure will want to try them, too. Provide directions for each section of the Mini Gallery Guide as follows:

• Cover: Print the name of the selected gallery (e.g., Civil War, One-room Schoolhouse, The Great Depression, The 1960s). Refer to the museum Visitor's Guide brochure for gallery names or let students use a name that has meaning for them.
• You can see: Choose your favorite artifact or historic object from this gallery. Draw the artifact, print its name and write something about it.
• You can visit: Did you learn about any special historic places in this gallery, such as a building, a mine, or lumber camp, a room inside a house or school? Draw a picture of it, print its name and write something about it.
• You can do: What did you do in this gallery? Did you look or listen, try a computer game or watch a movie? Draw a picture of yourself doing it. Describe what you did.
• You can meet: What interesting person in history did you learn about in this gallery? Was it an explorer, a soldier, a miner, an automobile designer or someone else? Sketch the person's picture, print his/her name and write what made him/her interesting.
• What came before: Think of the museum as a big time line. What was the topic of the gallery before this one? (E.g., statehood and settlement preceded the Civil War, World War II [Arsenal of Democracy] came before the 1950s.) Determine where you were in history.
• Where you will go next: Again, if the museum is a time line, what's next in history?

(This part of the activity could also be completed while at the museum. Provide each student with a pencil and a clipboard to hold the Mini Gallery Guide; add color to sketches with markers or crayons later.)

After students fill in the sections of the Mini Gallery Guide, let them use the back of the sheet to draw more pictures, maps or other information they want to share but could not fit on the front. When finished, have them fold the Mini Gallery Guide in half on the long center dashed line, then in thirds. Share and discuss the guides in the classroom, then have students post them and/or give them to future museum visitors.

This activity meets Michigan Curriculum Content Standards in the following areas:

• Social Studies: Historical Perspective - Time and Chronology; Inquiry - Information Processing
• Arts Education: Creating - Visual Arts
• English Language Arts: Meaning and Communication - Reading, Writing

Michigan Historical Center, Department of History, Arts and Libraries
Use and Reproduction Information [PDF]
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