How to “Do” an Art Museum with the Kids

More and more art museums the world over are becoming kid-friendly places, offering paper-and-pencil treasure hunts for elementary school children, often with a prize or contest at the end, or family-friendly podcasts and App tours to the choicest bits of their collection.

But what if there’s no tour? What if your older child considers the museum treasure hunt “too young”? And what if you'd prefer that the children not separate from you, literally and physically?

You want to enjoy the museum experience together rather than have your kids plug in the earbuds...again!  Or perhaps you wish to make a return visit to a museum where the kids have already done the treasure hunt on offer. 

What do you do?

Create your own treasure hunt!  Here's how:

Tip #1 – Bring Supplies

A few easy snacks, like nuts and dried fruits, are always must-haves when tromping with the kid(s).  But en route to a museum add creative materials to your bag of tricks: sketch books, colored pencils, pastels, etc., whatever might pique your group's fancy.   

Now you know your kids best, so you decide whether you want to surprise them with these provisions once there or get them excited in advance by packing them into their own daypacks.  When Loo was younger, she had a designated “art bag” that remained at the ready for our museum outings, whether spontaneous or planned.

Tip #2 – Start at the End

Begin your visit at the museum shop. Direct your kids straight to the postcard section – I’ve never met a museum that didn’t have one – and invite them each to pick out three favorites.  Postcards sold at museums typically represent works of that collection.  But it’s best to make sure…

Tip #3 – Research Never Hurts

…Ask the kids to flip their cards over to find the name of the artist and title of the work.  You may know your art history well enough to tell them a bit about the movement or school into which each artist fell.  In all events, join the gang as they peruse the shelves for information on master and title.  Flip open books; browse through the glossy reproductions.  Study the museum map to locate where each masterpiece might be found within the museum’s holdings.  Watch as the kids use their map-reading and orientation skills to organize their route to each buried treasure.

Now armed with a bit of information about each work and where it is located, set off on your very own, self-styled treasure hunt!

Tip #4 – Observe as You Go

Okay, you may be on the trial of a handful of specific artworks, but that doesn’t mean you can’t observe others along the way.  Take advantage of the journey, pointing out this painting and remarking on that sculpture as you go.  But a word of caution: kids can get pretty directed at this stage and may not welcome too many distractions.

Tip #5 – Let them Find the Treasure

It’s a real pleasure to watch the kids use their clues as they zero in on their quarry.  They’ll refer to their maps, study their postcards, check the name or number of the exhibit room, notice the names of other painters hailing from the same era and school.  They may even be inspired to help one another! Just sit back and watch, stepping in only when you need to. Let them do it.

Tip #6 – Pick One

Now that you’ve unearthed each treasure, ask the kids to agree to go back to one single gem, or several gems within the same room. Once there, drop down on the floor and pull out your materials.  Take a minute to sketch with them yourself.  Once the kids are involved, you can leave them to go look around the museum on your own, straying only as far as your parenting feelers will allow. 

Fear not! Loo and I have done this on three continents and have never been chastised by a single museum worker.  In fact, we've found that they appreciate seeing kids engage with the art.  Once, at age eight, Loo wiggled her way through the crowd at Paris’ Louvre Museum intent on drawing the Mona Lisa. A cadre of guards stands over the famous painting every day, there simply to keep the hordes moving. No one gets more than a few minutes before they are asked to make room for next group of gawkers.  But on this day the guards did not once bother Loo.  They protected her and kept her safe from the picture-takers and tour groups brushing by her as she happily sketched away, oblivious to the crowd.

Tip #7 – The Prize

Of course, enjoying a museum and having a great drawing to take home as a souvenir is prize enough.  But nothing tops off a day at the museum like a hot chocolate and piece of cake. So take yourselves out for a bite afterward and talk about art!



Image:

Cousins getting ready for a trip to the museum with their new sketch book, photo credit: Sarah B. Towle © 2010.

Travel With Kids: To Go or Not To Go

My advice: Go!

Traveling with even the littlest ones in tow is an extremely rewarding experience. I’ve been traveling with Loo since her birth in a Hong Kong teaching hospital more than 15 years ago. Her first international voyage was at five-and-a-half months when the Uber-Mensch and I packed her into a baby carrier and “did” Malaysia. She trekked Nepal’s Annapurna Sanctuary with us when she was 17 months old; and climbed a good chunk of the Great Wall of China at 20 months. She discovered that Balinese monkeys aren’t very good at sharing on her 2^nd birthday, and the list goes on. Most recently, we explored every nook and cranny of Petra, Jordan, together, then galloped our way around Wadi Rum on purebred Arabian horses.

So you see, I speak with some authority when I say, “take the kids!” But I would also caution you to be willing to adjust your expectations for bringing the kids does change the way you travel.

For one thing, travel with kids shifts your day from nights to mornings. Gone are the late-night clubbing sprees (unless you can find a babysitter in your temporary locale). But there’s really nothing more magical than discovering a new city by dawn’s early light and sharing your first espresso with the locals as they start their day.

When Loo was four we spent two weeks in Tuscany with five days in Florence dedicated to looking at art. Thanks to Loo, who has always possessed the nasty habit of waking with the sun, our mornings began so early that we managed to avoid queues at even the most trafficked museums at peak tourist season!

We were the first to enter the Academia Gallery, for example, and thus we had Michelangelo's David to ourselves. That is until Loo, after slowly circumnavigating the impressive statue several times, head fixed upward, mouth wide open, eyes roaming over each enormous limb and feature, suddenly shrieked, “I can’t look at it anymore!”, and streaked right out of the museum.  Averting disaster, we made a swift exit ourselves.

Travel with kids offers you a new perspective. Perhaps you’ve never noticed how amazing a pigeon can be. Well, okay, I exaggerate. But the point is that traveling with kids forces you to look at the world from a different angle. We tend to travel quickly, taking in every possible site in the guide to the point of utter exhaustion. This just isn’t possible when traveling with kids.

Be ready for those unexpected moments. Like when your intended visit to that last monument is compromised because your little one just won’t be pulled away from the sand pit in the lovely Parisian neighborhood park you happened to stumble upon along the way. Give in; let it happen. So you missed Napoleon's Tomb, but there’s nothing quite like watching your kids negotiate playground rules in another language and culture.

Be willing to slow down and possibly even split up.  If confronted with the above situation, the UM would most assuredly have encouraged me carry on to see the Tomb. He prefers most of the time, like Ferdinand, to just sit and smell the roses while I like to go, go, go.  Adults can always split up for a little while, take turns playing tourist vs. soaking up local culture with the kids. There’s beauty in that too.

So, yes, take the kids. But don’t take their stuff.  Kids don’t need much when on the road. They can share your bed; take a nap in a carry pack or carrier; sit on your lap at a restaurant; and take a load off in a light, folding umbrella stroller. Their clothes fit easily in your suitcase and their books and small playthings can be stuffed on their own little bag which they can carry themselves.

By the age of five, Loo knew just what to put in her pint-sized pack and insisted, much to her parents chagrin, on carrying her own boarding pass!

Check out this post from Ciao Bambino! for more on the topic of traveling with kids.

Image of the Lucky-one-and-only (Loo), age five, driving around the Tuileries, Paris, France, © Sarah B. Towle, 2000.

The Story Lives!

A few weeks ago, after returning from two professional conferences on everything to do with publishing, I mused here on the fate of the book.  I wrote that although the book as we've known it does appear to be stepping aside with the advent of new digital formats, our friend the story remains very much alive and well.

And if you look at this recent post from Imagination Soup, it would appear that this observation is right on target.

Even on the go, maybe especially on the go, kids are still reading and interacting with text. Digital media, rather than taking the place of the still much-loved book, are just making it easier for kids to read more often!

The key is to ensure that the content in their hands is the best it can be. 

I'll save that for another post.

Image found on www.bestipodreview.com.

What’s App all About?

My name is Sarah. I’m a writer, history-buff, language teacher, singer, horse-back rider, wife of the Uber-Mensch and mother of a teenage girl, the Lucky-one-and-only. My teenager, Loo, doesn't think much of me at the moment: not what I wear or how I spend my time or how I chew or what I do.

What do I wear? I dress comfortably, mostly. You have to when you spend most of your day in a chair. Loose-fitting exercise pants are best. Even pajamas.

How do I chew? About that I cannot comment except to say that I don’t chew enough, apparently. I’m so busy I forget to eat most days and Loo doesn’t like it. Especially when I bang on about how important it is for teenagers to have a regular balanced diet and to stay away from sweets. (It’s true, Loo, I’m a hypocrite. But how 'bout surprising me with a sandwich or an apple from time to time.)

How I spend my time is mostly alone, in my chair, as I said. And, honestly, I really don’t mind.

But what I do is not what most other moms do. I work, but I don’t have a "real job" that I go to in an office with an assistant. I’m self-employed -- self-employed and currently self-funded. That's right, I'm gobbling up Loo's future college fund while I sit at home all day alone in my chair.

I am in the business of publishing educational and tourism Apps for iPhone and iPod Touch targeted to youth -- to Loo and her peers. More specifically, the Time Traveler Tours are historically-based StoryApp itineraries.

The first, Beware Madame la Guillotine, is a tour of Paris during the French Revolution guided and narrated by a 24-year-old murderess, Charlotte Corday. It's coming out soon and is only the first. If successful, many more StoryApp Tours to many more cities will follow.

Put the past in the palm of your hand with Time Traveler Tours.

Discover history with those who made it.

Did I mention that writing an App is hard? Did I make it clear that building a small-business is a tremendous amount of work? Did my list of credentials, above, say anything about me as a Marketer or legal mind or IT guru? No.   

Some days the challenge is wholly Sisyphean.

But there’s no convincing Loo. Too her, I’m just a slacker who sits around the house all day in my pajamas eating up her college fund.

If she only knew... 

Image by Loo while vacating with me in Carcassonne, France, April 2010.

Eiffel Tower Loses Job as TV Transmitter

As of today, 8 March 2011, the French capital goes all digital as the analogue TV transmitters perched atop the Eiffel Tower go dark.

The very function that saved the Iron Lady from destruction in 1909 -- that it was found to be an ace antenna in the service of first the telegraphy industry, then radio (1918) and later TV (1957) -- has now been rendered obsolete.

According to this article in Broadband TV News, only two of the nation's 22 regions remain dependent on analogue reception. France's switch to digital began six years ago in 2005. By the end of 2011, analogue terrestrial TV reception in France will be a thing of the past.

Image © Sarah B. Towle, 2010.

How to Make Chocolate

I recently had the pleasure of touring Girard Chocolatier, a three-generation family business founded in 1920 and located right in the heart of Paris. My group was welcomed with steaming hot chocolate and a sampling of flavored bonbons before we were invited to descend into the basement factory. What the place lacked in natural light and cheery décor it more than made up for with its ambience of dedicated artisanal creativity and sweet perfumed air. The best part was the chocolate fountain, into which I had to restrain myself from dipping my arms up to my elbows and licking them clean, like a gluttonous Augustus Gloop.

Who knew what a tremendous journey it is from humble cocoa bean to mouth-watering chocolate treat!

Our sage guide, Jean-Baptiste, explained both the science of manufacturing chocolate as well as the art of fabricating chocolates.Today, I’ll step you through the science, that is,

How to Make Chocolate:

• First, take a cocoa fruit, still on the vine. These can be found in warm climates, mainly in Africa and South America, and take three to five years to mature.
• Break the shell of the fruit, letting it drop to the ground where it can decompose and fertilize the soil to nourish the cocoa plants in the coming years.
• Extract the cocoa beans from the shell and let them ferment for up to a week. FYI: It is the process of fermentation that gives the cocoa bean its flavor. Without fermentation, there would be no chocolate.
• Dry the beans in the sun for 2-3 weeks, taking care to turn them frequently and to protect them from rain and/or harsh sun. Once upon a time, the beans were turned, or “polished”, by foot.
• Package and sell the cocoa beans to a chocolate manufacturer, the folks who produce chocolate (not chocolates).
• Torrify the beans – great word, right? – which means, quite simply, to dry by fire. In other words: roast those babies good!
• Winnow the roasted beans from their shells.
• Separate the roasted cocoa into liquid and solid parts by grinding the beans for several days under intense pressure and significant heat to melt way the cocoa fat, also called cocoa butter, from the cocoa mass. 
• Collect the cocoa fat - it's very valuable stuff!
• Grind the cocoa mass into cocoa powder.

Et voila! Now you’re ready to pass these goods onto the fabricators, like the folks at Girard Chocolatier, to make your favorite chocolate bars and bonbons.

Stay tuned for part II - How to Make Chocolates - in another Time Traveler Tours blog post. 

Click here to find out how chocolate made it to France in the first place and the origin of the word "bonbon"!



Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, Cocoa pods by Medicaster, 2006.

Jacques-Louis David: "Photojournalist" of his Time

Before we had cameras, film, video, mobile phones, etc., to help us record the course of human events, we had painters. And France in the years spanning the Revolution, the first Republic and the first Empire had Jacques-Louis David: the photojournalist of his time.

Read all about him in my latest article published in Bonjour Paris, a great on-line resource covering practically everything Parisien!

Don't forget: We love your comments!



Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-George, 1745-1799

In honor of Black History Month in the US and Canada, I wish to introduce you to a little known Frenchman named Joseph Boulogne, le Chevalier de Saint-George, aka the “Black Mozart”.

Joseph was born in Guadeloupe to a black slave woman named Nanon and her former master, George Boulogne de Saint-George. George loved Nanon so when, in 1747, he was accused of murder for mortally wounding a man in a fencing duel, he fled to France, taking Nanon and three-year-old Joseph with him to keep them from being sold. Though George was eventually pardoned and allowed to return to his Guadeloupe plantations, he would install Joseph in France to receive a nobleman’s education.

Joseph was an exceptional student. He excelled in literature, horseback riding and most notably fencing. He was an expert marksman, thus earning the title of Chevalier. In addition, Joseph became a master of the harpsichord, a violin virtuoso and a prolific composer.

But it was no easy task to have dark skin in late 18^th century France. Le Code Noir, issued in the 17^th century to protect the interests of slave owners and traders, legalized racial segregation. White popular opinion, that Africans and their descendants were genetically inferior to white Europeans, held sway even amongst such notable thinkers as Voltaire. Despite his friendships with Mozart and Haydn; despite his friendly relations with the royal family, including Marie-Antoinette; despite the huge crowds that amassed to hear his operas and concertos; despite, as well, his position as the first black colonel of the French Army, Joseph was still obliged as a person of color to register his comings and goings with the government.

When Joseph was selected, under Louis XVI, to become Director of the Royal Opera, three divas thwarted the appointment in the grounds that “their honor and their delicate conscience could never allow them to submit to the orders of a mulatto.”

Joseph Boulogne died in 1799. During his short life of 54 years, he wrote 25 concertos for violin and orchestra, numerous string quartets, sonatas and symphonies as well as at least five, possibly six, operas.  In the ensuing 200 years, however, he fell into obscurity. Critics contend that Boulogne’s fellow countrymen minimized his importance on the basis of his ethnic background.

So, I'd like to send a shout out to Lesa Cline-Ransome, author, and James E. Ransome, illustrator, for their new children's title: Before There was Mozart: The Story of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-George.

Special thanks, too, to my friends Lee Wade and Anne Schwartz at Schwartz & Wade Books for helping to allow Joseph and his talents to shine once again!

Happy Black History Month!



Who was St. Valentine?

Well, it appears there are several answers to that question.

The name Valentine is derived from the latin word valens, meaning worthy, strong, powerful. It was given to 14 martyred saints of ancient Rome, all of whom were killed trying to convert Romans to the new religion. Pope Glelasius I first established the feast of St. Valentine in 496 A.D. to venerate these early Christians who by then had been largely forgotten.

Why he chose the date of Feburary 14^th may be because one of the 14 saints was purportedly buried on this date.  But others believe it was more likely an attempt to supersede the Pagan festival of Lupercalia, an Roman purification ritual held from 13-15 February each year to wash away the evil spirits of the previous year and to release health and fertility to all in the coming one.

The current practice of associating Valentine's day with romance began in 14^th century England with Geoffrey Chaucer and his circle when the practice of “courtly love” -- openly expressing your amorous feelings for another, through poems, verses, scented letters delivered by intermediaries -- became the new rage.

Happy Valentine’s Day all! 

Did YOU feel the love today?



Opera Garnier

Ever wanted to get back stage at the Opéra Garnier? 

Check out this article, written by yours truly and published in Bonjour Paris, a great on-line resource covering practically everything Parisien!