A Foolproof Trick for Museums With Kids

When my daughter was 4, we went to visit my sister. My sister and I were excited to go to a museum to see a quilt exhibition. My daughter was not and was mad and pouty. Until the very end, there was a kid’s art area where she could draw and do crafty things and then she didn’t want to leave. If only we’d discovered that area first!

I spent five months in DC last year for a fellowship and one of my weekend delights was visiting the city’s many museums, especially the art museums. Together with my sister, who lives in England, we would do “funny theme walks” which I would share with her via watsapp. Ugly babies. Little boys in frilly dresses. People who look really bored. Women who look way too pale. I would send her pictures and we would discuss what is going on in the picture, why do these people look like that, why were they painted like that. It turns every museum visit into a scavenger hunt. At the Lima Art Museum, I always tell people, especially kids to “Look for the Colonial painting showing a wise man defeating the devil with the wisdom emanating from his pen, while his unicorn sidekick looks on”

I always loved the questions my mum would ask us – (portraits) who would you invite to dinner? (landscapes) where would you like to go? Which painting would you want at home? Why do you think that person is doing xyz? We would all take time to examine each piece and then share our answers

Nice idea! When my daughter was around six or seven I would give her a camera (if photos are allowed) and tell her to go around and take photos of the things she liked! She never complained!

Love this idea. Sometimes in art museums we play a game. We walk around the gallery on our own and then come back together and share our favorite piece and which piece we would hang in our house. It’s a great way to get kids talking about art and seeing the different ways that art functions with meaning and importance.

We live in DC where museums are also abundant and my kids have grown up visiting them. Now that they’re in middle school and high school I’ve adopted a new strategy to encourage them to get out and explore on their own / with friends. They pick a museum to visit and commit to spending 2 hours looking at exhibits and I fund a snack break for them and their friend, usually at the museum cafe. I love hearing about their adventures when they get home and $10 is not a bad trade-off for an afternoon practicing independence and encouraging curiosity.

No excuses needed for giving your kids candy- and this is a brilliant idea.
I love to go to museums with my sister. She really engages with kids at the museum and they have so much funny looking at the art. They make funny faces, mimicking the faces of the people in the art, and they talk about which picture they like best and why. She really LISTENS to them and they feel so heard and involved.
Also- this museum looks AMAZING!

Once when traveling with 4 kids, we had them each research a piece of art in the museum before going and give a little talk about it. They enjoyed the screen time ;), and were really engaged in the museum experience. On a similar note, having a pair plan a day was also a success while traveling.
Finally, asking them to draw one of the museum pieces is also a great way to engage and change the pace a little.

When my children were younger I would always ask, “If you were allowed to take one thing from each room we entered, what would it be … and why.” This made them pay closer attention to the art in each room and made them form an opinion on each pick.

i once got my 5-year-old son to sit silent and rapt through an entire performance of the nutcracker by whispering, “ok, when the mice come on stage, you can have a cherry ludens.” and “watch for when the little clowns come out of the skirt, you can have another one.” at the end of the show, there was a small pile of [silently unwrapped by me] wrappers on my lap, and a boy who could see through time sitting next to me telling his grandmother, “that was a good show!”

For our 3 1/2 girl all it takes is a wooden toy camera. She is thrilled and pretends to photograph everything. Soon we will upgrade to a workig kids camera. Also, here in Italy many museums are filled with paintings from Middle Age and Renaissance, and she loves hearing the weird stories of the saints portrayed. We also ask her to spot some random stuff in the paintings (a blue cape, a sword, an angel, you name it). What we also find useful is to practice the “butterfly voice” at home (i.e. whispering), so that she can use it when visiting museums or the endless art-filled churches

If your kids are old enough to go off a bit independently, I found that sending them to take a picture of something and making it into a treasure hunt worked really well. They got increasingly ingenious about taking photos of tiny details of art works (encouraged close looking!) and I got ten minutes to look at the art undisturbed. Plus they spotted really fun details that I would have missed!

We lived in Amsterdam until my babes were 4 and 6 and practically lived in the museums during the colder weather. They have done such an amazing job of creating child-friendly (for many different age groups) guides and sections that the kids would just request different museums when we asked what they wanted to do. If you happen to be planning a trip to Amsterdam with or without kids, do yourself a favor and purchase the museumjaarkaart.

I took my then 2 1/2 year old to the Musee Cluny in Paris to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. All of a sudden he took our umbrella and pretended it was a sword and ran full pace down the long corridor, charging with a loud war cry. I screamed from the depths of my gut – and started running after him, my husband ran, security guards ran, then just short of of tapestries he halted, turned around and laughed. I burst into tears.

Luckily that trip was punctuated with multiple occasions of collective gasps as toddlers fingered Matisse’s and poked the Picasso’s (and those kids were French).

I love this tip!! We have a kid with lots of ADHD characteristics and external rewards have been everything. I think of it as pairing something you love with something you don’t love (or, as with museums, don’t *yet* love :) to get it done. Like podcasts and housecleaning. I figure internal motivation will come easier later on in life.

I grew up always being dragged to museums in different countries with my grand mother, who always bought me books and signed them. Hated it at the time, and now these books are so so previous to me. My frame background is of a Monet piece, the last exhibit I saw with my grandmother.

It’s wild how the things you at one time couldn’t stand become your anchors.

Haha I think it depends on the kind of museum… and the type of child. I grew up begging to go to the Art Institute in Chicago from a very young age and would stare wide eyed at the America windows or Seurat paintings, while my brother couldn’t stand it (and still can’t, as an adult). But he loved the Museum of Science and Industry as well as the Field Museum, which are both full of gadgets and natural history and interactive pieces. He’s an engineer now. We all have our own jams. Age doens’t have that much to do with it.

My biggest win for our five kids ages 12 and under in galleries is to go on an art scavenger hunt!

We hit the gift shop first and each child picks a postcard of a piece of art they are interested in / find beautiful and then… we go on a hunt to find each piece. They are totally motivated, no whining, and the best part is it demystifies the gift shop too so no moaning about wanting to buy something later in the visit.

Even better, they come home with a meaningful souvenir that they love decorating their rooms with. Just make sure the postcard is of a piece currently on display to avoid crushing disappointment (been there, less fun!) xxH

Duck tails! It can be so hard for little ones in a museum setting where touching is not allowed. But standing straight with the back of your hands resting on the small of your back means you can form a little duck tail behind you. It can be a gentle reminder to look and not touch while adopting the posture of a seasoned gallery visitor!

I work in a museum and learned this from a friend who brought generations of kids and grandchildren through the galleries with the frequent request “Let me see those duck tails!”

If the organization has visitor services staff, it’s also fun to ask them what their favorite pieces are when you enter. Then, even if the museum doesn’t have a map or activity sheet for little ones, you’ve got an instant scavenger hunt to find that piece. And hopefully the rest of you find your own favorites in the process!

My parents made me go to SO many museums as a kid and now I’m a museum-obsessed adult. Their trick? At the very end, everyone had to go around and show the family their favorite piece. It made me and my brother very opinionated about which art we liked best.

Love this post! We also always bring a sketch book and colored pencils for the kids to draw in the galleries, use the maps at the beginning for everyone to pick one thing to go on the hunt for and make a stop in the gift shop after. Makes for a fun trip and a happy bunch.

Candy is magic for kids. I teach violin lessons and I have a particular 6 year old who loves violin but doesn’t quite understand that the lesson time needs to be spent playing the violin in order to make progress. So I have started telling her “I have a piece of chocolate for you if we play five songs during the lesson” and suddenly it’s easy as pie to get through her songs. I like the idea in this post- the added trust and responsibility that comes with offering the candy AHEAD of time. I will definitely try this in her next lesson! ❤️

Follow the leader! I let them take turns being the leader & they get to go WHEREVER in the museum they want to go – and thousands of steps later we’ve seen so much. I love it. P.s. Cleveland’s Art Museum is wonderful!

I love this trick from a friend of a friend: the kids can collect a nickle for every nude they spot. One way to keep little eyes engaged!

When I was last in Paris I saw real witchcraft. We had gone to the Musée Jacquemart-André which is a museum in an old mansion. There was a group of 15 3 year olds with two adults. They were there for a birthday party. The adults walked them through the museum, talking about different paintings. Two hours later they were in the cafe having lunch and cake as a group.

My husband and I laughed and laughed over lunch about what a group of American children would have done.