Helping Children Cope
Children may experience distress or other emotions during or after this health emergency. Click here for CDC resources on helping children cope: https://www.cdc.gov/childrenindisasters/helping-children-cope.html
Homeschooling tips from Rutgers
For parents home with school-aged children, Rutgers University provides tips for keeping kids engaged at home here: https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-experts-tips-working-parents-turned-teachers?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rutgerstoday&utm_content=Community
Digital Programming from the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has a number of digital resources for students that anyone can access from home.
Student Discovery Sets: Puts primary sources in student’s hands by bringing together historical artifacts and documents on a wide range of topics.
Current Exhibitions: The Library has several current exhibitions available online, including ones on Rosa Parks, the Nineteenth Amendment, comic art and more.
Digital Collections: Over 400 digital collections are available online, featuring content from U.S. Presidents, musicians, inventors, historic newspapers and more.
By the People: A crowdsourcing initiative that allows anyone to volunteer to improve access to history by transcribing, reviewing and tagging Library of Congress documents.
Ask a Librarian: The tool remains available to the public, with Librarians available to answer questions and provide research assistance.
The Library’s National Screening Room: Showcases the Library’s vast moving image collection. It is designed to make otherwise unavailable movies, both copyrighted and in the public domain, freely accessible to viewers worldwide.
Digital Programming from The Smithsonian Institute
The Smithsonian Institute, a group of museums and research centers administered by the Government of the United States, also has digital resources for students.
Smithsonian Learning Lab: A free, interactive platform for discovering millions of authentic digital resources and creating content with online tools. The Learning Lab has an immense amount of content, and the Getting Started guide is a helpful resource.
Smithsonian Open Access: Allows students to download, share and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images without asking permission because they have been released into the public domain.
Smithsonian Digital Volunteers Program: Allows the general public to make things like historical documents and biodiversity data more accessible. Students can join fellow volunteers to add more field notes, diaries, ledgers, logbooks, manuscripts, biodiversity specimen labels and more to the collection.
Sidedoor: A podcast for students that enlists the help of biologists, archaeologists, zookeepers and astrophysicists to tell engaging and educational stories.
Digital Programming from The National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art offers learning resources and programs for audiences of all ages. To support parents and their children, teachers, students, and caregivers alike, our educators created this selection of activities, lesson plans, films, and other materials for learning at home.
Children’s Video Tours: A selection of 50 video tours allows you to take a closer look together and explore paintings, people, places, and surprising scenes from distant lands and times.
An Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work: This family-oriented art resource introduces children to more than 50 great artists and their work, with corresponding activities that inspire artistic development, focused looking, and creative writing. Download the book to delve into art from different periods grouped around seven themes: Studying Nature, Exploring Places, Examining Portraits, Telling Stories, Observing Everyday Life, Questioning Traditions, and Playing with Space.
Look Together Make connections with art and with one another by using these conversation starters online. This resource guides you in selecting a work of art, sharing your observations, and making comparisons together.
NGAkids App for iPad: contains eight interactive activities that draw upon works in the Gallery’s collection, with a sketchbook for freehand drawing and a personal exhibition space for saving and displaying art created with the program. The child-friendly interface, easy-to-use tools, and overarching emphasis on discovery, careful looking, and artistic self-expression make this app educational and fun for the whole family. It is suitable for all ages.
Streaming Videos: Stuart Davis: In Full Swing: Narrated by John Lithgow, this 30-minute, closed-captioned documentary surveys the career of the American artist Stuart Davis and includes original footage shot on location in New York and Gloucester, Massachusetts; interviews with scholars and a musician; images of Davis’s paintings; and archival footage and photographs of the artist.
Pre-K and Kindergarten Lessons and Activities: Inspire creativity in your pre-K and kindergarten-aged kids through various hands-on art activities. Download coloring pages of works in the Gallery’s collection for extra fun.
Grades 1 and 2 Lessons and Activities: These popular lessons cover the basic elements of art and other interdisciplinary activities. For instance, the unit on line in the series draws inspiration from Frank Stella’s Jarama II and guides students in making abstract line art.
Grades 3 to 5 Lessons and Activities: These expanded lessons connect art with writing, math, science, and history. For example, in the Two Faces of Paul Gauguin, you can learn more about the life of that artist and how to create a symbolic, collage-style self-portrait inspired by his.
The Art of Romare Bearden: Become inspired by the work of this preeminent African American artist. Discover the places where he lived and worked (the rural South, Pittsburgh, Harlem, and the Caribbean) and the themes he explored through his art (including religion, jazz and blues, history, literature, and the realities of black life). Scroll through this book to write poems, make collages, and organize your own exhibition. Find and download other guides here.
Uncovering America Uncover what it means to be American through art at the Gallery. Discover compelling stories of creativity, struggle, and resilience in this set of resources for K–12 educators featuring works that reflect the richness and diversity of the people, places, and cultures of the United States. Encourage creative, critical, and historical thinking in your students as you examine works of art from the country’s creation to the present day. Eleven thematic modules include Expressing the Individual, People and the Environment, and Activism and Protest.
Digital Programming from The National Archives
National Archives Virtual Program Newsletter
Issue #1, March 24, 2020
Issue #2, April 7, 2020
