Fifth-Graders Create Classroom Museum

A few months ago, they were just names in an art history book: Picasso, Chagall, Van Gogh. But for 18 fifth-graders at First Lutheran School of Northridge, their work has come alive via a unique classroom experience.

“The kids love it,” said teacher Wendy Jensen, describing a six-week lesson that put her students to work transforming their classroom into a fictional museum filled with art. “It’s very involved. It’s a real-life experience.”

After brainstorming ideas for the museum, students used scissors, construction paper and glue to build a paper facade along one wall of the room. To make the illusion complete, each child was given a job on the museum’s staff, portraying security guards, docents and managers.

The goal, Jensen explained, was to demonstrate that art is more than paintings and sculpture. Students learned that just displaying a masterpiece takes knowledge and effort.

To fill their museum, students studied the work of artists like Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh, “not necessarily to copy anything they did,” Jensen said, “but to try to copy their style.” The result was a colorful collection of Georgia O’Keeffe-inspired cattle skulls and Picasso-like Cubist sketches that covered nearly every wall in the room.

Tonight, Jensen’s students will offer “tours” of the museum during the school’s annual open house. For docents Justine Wagner, Jessica Folck, Jennifer Peterson, Michelle Feerer and Stephanie Shaker, it’s a chance to show off their knowledge of the artists’ lives and work.

“In some of his pictures it’s like your leg is where your arm is,” Jessica said of Picasso’s work during an impromptu tour. “But his realism is very beautiful too.”

Across the room, Stephanie described Van Gogh’s stormy life, noting that the 19th century Dutch painter suffered from powerful bouts of depression during his short career.

“You could truly say he was a little mental but a fabulous painter,” she said.