K - 12 Programming

Explore our programs

From museum collection tours to hands-on programs and workshops, there is a wide variety of experiences to enjoy at the U of A all year round!


U of A Museums and Collections currently offers the following programs for schools.

Art Programs & Workshops

Cost: Free
Grades: 1 to 12
Timing: Year-round
Length: 1 to 3 hours
Contact: museums@ualberta.ca 

The University of Alberta Museums (UAM) Art Collection offers different art and Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) programs year-round on the University of Alberta campus. These programs are a minimum of 1 hour long. All of our art and VTS programs are scalable to accommodate different grade levels between Grade 1 - Grade 12. Activities are altered to be easier or more challenging depending on the age group. Alterations in past programs have included additional group work or adding additional writing elements to the activities. Below are the program outlines for our four art and VTS programs:

Students will learn about the printmaking process and create their own prints.

Options: 

  • Visiting the Print Study Centre (when time, schedules, and staff permit)
  • Watching a short National Film Board film about an Inuit artist / printmaker.
  • For junior high students (grades 7-9), we will add in the additional element of writing an art label for their artworks to bring writing and self-expression skills into the program. Students will title and write an artist statement for the prints they created. 

Students will use the Visual Thinking Strategy of art recipes to help them connect with and understand a work of art from the UAM Art Collection. They will also explore the world of mixed media art and collage to learn about its history and current practices. Finally, students will create their own mixed media collages and write an Art Recipe for their artwork.

Through writing the Art Recipes for their artwork students will be encouraged to think about their media and process choices and how it impacted the themes and feelings they are expressing through their art. 

Students will use two Visual Thinking Strategies to help them connect with and understand works of art from the UAM Art Collection: Artful Thinking and Beginning/Middle/End. Students will be guided on how to observe, interpret, and connect with a work of art through Artful Thinking and will use Beginning/Middle/End start thinking about the work of art in the context of a story. Students will then get to apply their deep dive into a work of art by writing their own story.

Options:

  • Students can write, draw or act out the rest of the story (beginning, middle, end). 
  • Students can share their final creations with the class by acting out their scene, reading their story, or showing off their works of art. 

Students will use the Visual Thinking Strategy See, Think, Wonder to help them connect with and understand works of art from the UAM Art Collection. Students will be guided through using this strategy before they turn to individual reflections on a work of art. Students will use their reflections on the artwork to write a short poem. As an option - students can work in groups and create a group poem out of single lines from their individual poems. This fun additional group activity encourages collaboration and further creativity.

Options:

  • Students can think of one work they would use to describe the work of art, and then use those words to come up with a poem as a class/group. 
  • Students can think of one line of a poem and use their lines to create multiple poems in groups.

Exhibition-Specific Programs

Cost: Free
Grades: K to 12
Timing: Only when exhibitions are running at the Kenneth and Sandra Wong Gallery
Length: 1 to 3 hours
Contact: museums@ualberta.ca 

We also offer exhibition-specific programs to schools when we have an exhibition running at the Kenneth and Sandra Wong Gallery. 

These are only available:

  1. when we have an exhibition happening at the Kenneth and Sandra Wong Gallery.
  2. outside of the gallery's public hours. 

Exhibition-specific programs will vary by exhibition but generally include a tour of the exhibition and a classroom activity or craft. All of our exhibition-specific programs are scalable to accommodate different grade levels. Activities are altered to be easier or more challenging depending on the age group. Alterations to past programs have included adding group work or incorporating more writing elements to the activities, in addition to the basic scaling of information presented in the exhibition tour. 

A Day at the University of Alberta Museums

Cost: Free
Grades: K to 12
Timing: Year-round
Length: 1 to 3 hours (full-day if combined with another option)
Contact: museums@ualberta.ca 

There are several museum collections across campus that have regular visiting hours: the Human Ecology Gallery, the Mineralogy and Petrology Museum, the Paleontology Museum, and the W.G. Hardy Classics Museum. The University of Alberta Museums team can also contact curators of other collections that do not have public hours to see if they are available to host a school group on the day of your visit. The full list of museum collections on campus can be found here. Note: Classes with more than 20 students may be split into groups and rotate through activities due to constraints in some spaces.

We will work with teachers to ensure their visit is appropriately scaled to their class's needs and learning outcomes. Students can participate in one of our VTS programs or exhibition-specific programs in the morning and head off to explore one or more of the other museum collections on campus in the afternoon. We will work closely with the teacher and other museum staff to create the perfect day for their class at the University of Alberta Museums. We can also facilitate half-days at the museum collection by organizing a few collection visits or facilitating a VTS program in addition to a collection visit. 

Please note that visits to Rutherford House, Provincial Historic Site located on Saskatchewan Drive, as part of a day-long visit to the U of A campus, must be booked separately. Even though we cannot book visits to Rutherford House for teachers, we will work with them to make sure that their visit to University of Alberta Museum collections and programs works well with any other plans they may have on or near campus.