Gallery Activities
Looking for a way to engage your students as they explore the galleries? These activities are designed to help focus students on some of the larger themes presented in the museum. They challenge students to look closely and draw meaningful conclusions about the collections.
How to use these activities
Select an activity from the list below. Make photocopies of the activity for your students. The museum will NOT have copies available. Provide your students with crayons or pencils. Please ask your students to refrain from leaning on any of the glass cases while writing. We recommend providing students with clipboards or notebooks.
Forest Explorers
Recommended for Pre-K and Kindergarten
This activity is designed to be used in the New England Forests exhibition in conjunction with the Welcome to the Forest Discovery Program, but it can also be used independently. Students discover who lives where in the forest as they find and draw plants and animals in the New England Forests exhibition. This activity takes between 10 and 30 minutes to complete.
Museum Safaris
Recommended for Pre-K, Kindergarten, and Grade 1
Each of these activities can be used to aid young students’ exploration of the museum’s galleries during a self-guided visit or before or after a school program. Each activity takes between 10 and 30 minutes to complete, depending on the interest of the students.
Colors Around Me
The world is a colorful place! Students practice color recognition and observe the wide range of colors found in the natural world as they find and draw specimens of different colors in the museum’s galleries.
On the Move!
Animals have many different ways of getting from one place to another. Students learn some of the ways animals move as they find and draw animals that swim, fly, and walk on two or four legs.
Under Cover
Students look closely at what covers an animal’s body as they find and draw animals with fur, feathers, scales, and shells.
Animal Detectives
Recommended for Grades 1-6
This activity can focus students’ exploration of the museum’s galleries during a self-guided visit, an after-school visit, or before or after a school program. This activity takes about 15 minutes to complete.
Animal Art
This is an excellent pre-visit or post-visit activity. Students look at a small piece of an animal and draw what they imagine the rest of the animal looks like.
Animal Detective
Students practice close observation while searching for animals in the Great Mammal Hall.
Animal Detectives II
In this more in-depth version, students practice close observation while searching for animals in the Great Mammal Hall.
Gallery Games
Recommended for Grades 1-6
These thinking games can focus students’ exploration of the museum’s galleries during a self-guided visit, an after-school visit, or before or after a school program. These activities will help your group look at objects in the museum more closely and have fun with the exhibits. Work in small groups with an adult facilitating. This activity can last between 5 and 30 minutes depending on the interest of the students.
Earth and Planetary Sciences Gallery
Recommended for Grades 2–5
These activities can be used to aid students' exploration of the Earth and Planetary Sciences Gallery and its minerals, gems, and meteorites during a self-guided visit or before or after a school program. These activities take about 20 minutes to complete.
Mineral Guide for Chaperones
Designed for chaperones to use with students, this guide directs groups to well-known minerals in the gallery and provides information on the formation, uses, and properties of those minerals.
Mineral Activities Hint for Teachers
Use these hints to make the most out of the Mineral Activities, both in the museum and in your classroom.
Student Investigation
This activity challenges students to look closely at a mineral of their choosing. By examining the range of samples represented in the museum’s collection, the students discover what geologic properties make their mineral unique.
Junior Paleontologist
Recommended for Grades 2–5
This activity aids students’ exploration of the museum’s galleries during a self-guided visit or before or after a school program. From early arthropods to Ice Age mammals, the remains of extinct animals leave clues about the past. Students act as Junior Paleontologists by looking closely at fossils and making inferences about the animals’ lives. This activity takes about 30 minutes to complete.
Animal Trackers
Recommended for Grades 3–5
This activity may be used in the New England Forests exhibition during a self-guided visit, an after-school visit, or before or after a school program. Animal Trackers challenges students to look closely at the size and shape of animal feet as they match animals in the New England Forests exhibition to pictures of each animal's tracks. Students relate the tracks to how each animal moves by figuring out if the prints are from front or hind feet. This activity takes 10-20 minutes to complete.
Geologic Time Scale
Recommended for grades 3–8
For use in your classroom before or after a visit. The Geologic Time Scale maybe printed at various sizes for use while exploring museum exhibits or display in the classroom.
Evolution on Exhibit
Recommended for Grades 6–8 (can be used as a starting place for grades 9–12)
Explore evolution in the Harvard Museum of Natural History’s world-class collections with this gallery activity. By observing specimens and making inferences, students will investigate evolutionary concepts such as adaptation, speciation, coevolution, and the magnitude of time.