Dancing with Cats: Orlando Museum of Art

Amy clued me in about the Orlando Museum of Arts fun summer programs so the girl and I decided to check it out on Saturday morning. A little know fact about Patti Shivers is that I have an art minor from my college of study. E is also very artistic and the girl shows some natural talent. Regardless, exposure to culture is good for kids so off we went.

The feature this time was on William Joyce, the illustrator for such series as George Shrinks and Rolie Polie Olie.

There were tons of fun activities for young children...most of which were too young for the girl, but we did enjoy a stroll through the exhibit and marveled at the incredible illustrations of Joyce. I love education stuff that is geared for kids: for example, all the stuff was hung at the level of a child so that they could easily see it. Another feature I liked was that for some of the illustrations, they had to finished product, namely the book, right there with it so that you could see how it turned out. Additionally, there was a cool, "can you find it" game to play that listed about 25 things to find in pictures in the gallery. The educator in me loved it!

While the activities were too "babyish" according to the girl, (What??? they were doing Shrinky Dinks...you know cause George Shrinks...BRILLIANT!!!...and Story Hour...who doesnt love bean bags and a good book being read?? A 10 year old thats who!!) we strolled through the galleries and had them virtually to ourselves. She was most taken with any kind of sculpture or three dimensional art. I was shocked at how SMALL the museum is!! Growing up in Chicago we were artistically blessed with yearly school trips to the Art Institute, which is HUGE!

Her favorite was the area on Mayan art...it was very kid friendly and had some interactive stuff there. We literally spend a half hour just building stuff and doing Mayan-esque art. As I said, it was deserted and we had the place completely to ourselves...which allowed me to take these pictures with out a dossent snapping at me! Shhhhh dont tell! Picture taking is verboten! She also really enjoyed this huge magnetic board at which you could categorize the art by style or hue.