Harn Museum Tot Time

The Harn Museum in Gainesville Florida regularly hosts something called Tot Time where young children come and enjoy tours of the art museum on particular subjects.  This was our first opportunity to go to a Tot Time since we've lived here and I only wished we had gone sooner.  I have a phobia of art so I guess I just avoided it.  The docents were wonderful and they asked the kids wonderful questions about the pieces that really helped them to think about the different pieces of work.

This week the subject was sculpture.  We learned that in the museum there were paintings, sculptures and art objects.  Sculptures are things that you can walk all the way around (at least that is how she described it to the kids, and that was good enough for me.)  I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked because you can only get pictures in certain parts of the museum, but the works there were beautiful.  The display that I was particularly excited about was the artwork by the author and illustrator of Caps for Sale one of my favorite books growing up (and consequently now on of the boys favorite books as well).

Here is a picture of the docent having the children try to pose in the same position as the person in the sculpture.  She asked them questions about how we "know" it is a person since the body parts don't really look like a person.  As you can see they had fun, and Nathan being the perfectionist that he is had to come up with reasons that their pose wasn't quite right!

Here are the boys looking at a Terra Cotta pot piece in an open garden at the museum.  Pottery is also considered a piece of sculpture.  This pot is open at the bottom so that when it rains the water doesn't stay in it, but runs out of the bottom.  It was a very pretty garden.

Once the tour of the museum was over, we got to go downstairs and participate in an art project of our own.  The boys were given model magic clay and told that they could make their own sculptures.  At first they were thinking they might have to make pots... then they realized they could make anything they wanted to.  We had a little problem when Nathan mixed his three colors so much that it just looked like a purple blob, but one of the docents had mercy on him and let him have her ball that had been less smooshed.  

Gavin is very proud of his colorful ball.  He really liked Nathan's sculpture and in the end just had Nathan recreate one for him instead of making his own.  That made me sad, but maybe the next time we come back he will have more confidence in his own creative ability.

Here is Nathan's finished sculpture.  He wants to name it Clyterratops.  I didn't interpret it while he was making it, but it looks pretty cool to me.  We had a lot of fun and both kids said that they wanted to come back.  

I would highly suggest coming to visit Tot Time if you have kids of your own.  The official age is 2-5, and you have to e-mail register beforehand, but it was well worth it.  We had a ton of fun.  The other plus is that if there was any works of art that might have been questionable for young children at the museum we didn't see it.  Our docent was great and was very enthusiastic about the whole thing.  The boys learned a lot, and I am less scared of art.