Last week I had the pleasure of taking the 5th graders from my Gifted Art Club on a field trip to the VMFA. The Virginia Museum of Fine Art is in Richmond, two and a half hours from here. Most of the kids had never been to an art museum before, and none of them had been to the VMFA. I’d never been there before, for that matter! We spent the whole day there, but I feel like we just scratched the surface of the collection. That being said, I’ve been known to lose whole days to gallery-wanderings. I was worried about the attention spans of my 5th-graders, but was pleasantly suprised. My kids didn’t want to leave the museum, either! After docent-led tour, a sunny lunch on the lawn, and three hours of small group-sketching and wandering, the kids had more focus left in them – enough to learn a new craft (kumihimo braiding) on the bus ride home. Wonder children, I tell you what.
potting around.
susannah goodman 