WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM MUSEUMS?

By carefully looking at the objects in exhibits, our minds become engaged. Careful observation stimulates the use of critical thinking skills, such as:

Comparing and contrasting - recognizing similarities and differences in objects

Identifying and classifying - recognizing and grouping things that belong together

Describing - giving verbal or written descriptions of the objects viewed

Predicting - guessing what might happen

Summarizing - presenting information that has been gathered in a shortened or condensed form

LEARNING FROM OBJECTS

Learning from objects is easiest when we know our learning styles. Research shows that we learn best through one of three ways: hearing (auditory), seeing (visual), or touching/reenacting (tactile/kinesthetic), and some by a combination of:

Auditory learners like to be read to, understand more by hearing explanations of things, and are better at following verbal, rather than written, instructions.

Visual learners often like to read on their own, love books with lots of pictures, like information that is presented on a graph or chart, and like to draw diagrams and pictures.

Tactile-kinesthetic learners like to touch objects and feel textures, enjoy arts and crafts, and like to be in skits or plays, often pretending to be the person they're studying.