English Language Arts Program

Choose Your Own Adventure: Group Narrative Writing

Students will view and discuss many works of art from different areas of the NCMA’s permanent collection. Together, students will select artworks that represent key components of a narrative: characters, setting, conflict, and solution, and discuss a possible plot to create a collective story around their chosen works of art.
North Carolina Standards Connections to English Language Arts and Visual Art

Math Program

Artists as Real-World Math Problem Solvers

Students will engage with objects from the museum’s collection and explore their uses of geometry, area & perimeter, ratios, and coordinate planes. Students will have the opportunity to solve the mathematical problems that artists, curators, and art handlers might deal with in their everyday jobs. Please have calculators available for students, if necessary. This program comes with an optional Post-Virtual Field Trip Art Kit. Order yours at registration.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Math, Visual Art, Social Studies, and English Language Arts

Science Programs

Forces & Motion

Students will use all five of their senses to carefully observe three works of art from the NCMA’s permanent collection, looking for evidence of forces that cause objects to move. Students will explore how artists use “tricks” to imply movement in art that doesn’t actually move, comparing that to a kinetic sculpture that does move.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Science, Visual Art, and English Language Arts

Weather

Students will use all five of their senses to carefully observe three works of art from the NCMA’s permanent collection, looking for evidence of temperature, wind, and precipitation to determine the weather that each artist shows and explore how each weather condition is created.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Science, Visual Art, and English Language Arts

Social Studies Programs

Animal Masquerades

Using visual analysis, students will examine masks from two different West African cultures featuring animal imagery, and learn about their uses and symbolism. Using what they learned, students will have the opportunity to design animal imagery that represents them.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, and English Language Arts

Discovering Día de los Muertos

In this VFT, students will observe an ofrenda, one aspect of the Mexican celebration of Día de los Muertos and discover how the symbols used in the ofrenda celebrate and remember ancestors while connecting to Indigenous Mexican cultural practices shown through museum objects. This program comes with an optional Post-Virtual Field Trip Art Kit. Order yours at registration.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, and English Language Arts

Our State: North Carolina Art and Artists

Students will connect with their state through maps, museum objects about North Carolina by NC Artists, and their own experience to consider how pastimes might be different in the three geographic regions of the state.
North Carolina Standards  Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, and English Language Arts

The Stories Art Can Tell …

In each of these Virtual Field Trips, students will explore three works of art from the NCMA’s permanent collection featuring artists from groups that museums have historically excluded or under-represented. Through reading the works by different featured artist groups, students will practice the social emotional learning competencies of self and social-awareness and relationship skills.

featuring Black Artists

Students will “read” works of art from the permanent collection by African American artists and explore how each artist tells a story of Black History through their unique use of art elements and media.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, English Language Arts, and Social Emotional Learning

featuring Indigenous Artists

Students will “read” works of art from the permanent collection by Indigenous North American artists and explore how each artist tells a story of Native American past, present, and future. Students will discover how each artist uses their media and scale to elevate and point to the universality of these stories.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, English Language Arts, and Social Emotional Learning

featuring Latin American Artists

Students will “read” works of art from the permanent collection by Latin American artists and explore how each artist tells a story about their identity through images of place. Please have students come to their session with two pieces of paper each, any color. This program comes with an optional Post-Virtual Field Trip Art Kit. Order yours at registration.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, English Language Arts, and Social Emotional Learning

featuring Women Artists

Students will “read” works of art from the permanent collection by women artists and how each artist tells a story about their own intersecting identities through images of women. This program comes with an optional Post-Virtual Field Trip Art Kit. Order yours at registration.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Social Studies, Visual Art, English Language Arts, and Social Emotional Learning

Specials Classes Programs

Color and Art

Students will explore works of art from the NCMA’s permanent collection and discuss color as an element of art. Students will learn how color combinations (color schemes) are chosen by artists, and why they work, as well as how color temperature and saturation are used.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Visual Art and English Language Arts

Mesoamerican Ballgame

Students will examine two different objects from the Ancient Americas collection and think about the role of sports in community. Using what they learned, students will have the opportunity to work together and design their own game, continuing a tradition of community and play.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Physical Education, Visual Art, English Language Arts, and International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)

Music and Art

Students will look carefully at three works of art from the museum’s permanent collection and explore the connections between music and visual art through the use of rhythm and notes (whole, quarter, and half) as well as jazz music and musical instruments.
North Carolina Standards Connections to Music, Visual Art, Social Studies, and English Language Arts

World Language Programs

See our Spanish Language Programs page for more details.

Historias que el arte puede contar sobre Artistas Latinos

Spanish Language Program for fluent Spanish speakers

Exploring the Art and Language of Hispanic Artists

Bilingual Program for native English speakers learning Spanish or for native Spanish speakers learning English