Hundreds of visitors enjoy art activities created by Herron School of Art and Design students at the Children's Museum

In the Sunburst Atrium at the Children’s Museum, a few Herron School of Art and Design students placed crayons into neat piles while others stacked glue sticks into boxes. “I think we had about 300 children come to our table,” said art education assistant professor Alexa Kulinski as she helped her students pack up supplies at their art activity table. “We probably had about 500 people participate in total, though. The activities were designed for kids, but I noticed a lot of parents and grandparents joining in, too.”

Kulinski and her art education students set up two art projects as part of a larger community engagement campaign at the Children’s Museum facilitated by University Communications and Marketing at Indiana University. Alongside other IU Indianapolis schools and programs, Herron student volunteers created activity stations for children and their caregivers on two of the museum’s free admission days to raise awareness of Indiana University programming in the Indianapolis community.

Students in Herron’s art education program jumped at the chance to develop activities for the museum’s popular Free Days, held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President’s Day. Junior and senior art education majors, led by Herron’s Education Association president Izzy Benjamin, brainstormed several themes before deciding to focus their activity on dinosaurs. “I love the dinosaurs that are outside of the museum. They’re a big staple of the museum, especially now that they’ve started putting costumes on them,” noted Helena Reynosa, a senior art education major who serves as secretary of the Education Association. For one of the activities, they provided small stickers and markers so that visitors could decorate their own dinosaur printout.

The students also wanted to give visitors a chance to collaborate on a larger project. They originally planned to use glitter and thread to create a large tapestry, but quickly decided against using any material that might make a mess for museum staff on their busiest days of the year. Kulinski advised them to design an activity that would be quick, inexpensive, and accessible for all ages and abilities. The students landed on fossil rubbings that could then be glued to large sheets of butcher paper into a collage. In preparation for the activity days, they built “fossils” by gluing line drawings of Mesozoic-era sea creatures, bones, and dinosaur shapes onto squares of strong cardstock. While at the museum, students showed visitors that by putting a piece of paper over the fossil shape and rubbing it with a crayon, they could create an impression of the fossil on the paper.

Herron students wanted the activities to be fast-paced but nevertheless give participants an opportunity to build some skills. Benjamin explained that she and other students designed the activities in part to provide children with a chance to exercise their motor skills. “Many of the kids coming to the Children’s Museum are at the age where they need a lot more physical fine motor skill development,” said Benjamin, explaining that learning to hold crayons in a variety of ways could help children practice some of those fine motor skills.

Kulinski agreed and noted that it was interesting to watch her own students learn how to better facilitate that skill development. “They’re figuring out how to explain things efficiently. If a kid held a crayon like they would hold a pencil and tried to create a rubbing that way, it was difficult,” said Kulinski, noting that participants had to hold the crayon sideways to make the best rubbing. “My students realized that an easy way to explain how to handle the crayon would be to hold it like a crab. It was really cool to see those light bulbs go off. We do the readings about childhood development in class, but to see it in action with such a wide range of ages, I think it really clicked for the students.”