Jennifer Medina

March 1, 2016

HIS 301

Bowers Museum

Bowers Museum has been a well talked about locations amongst my coworkers and

a place I have wanted to visit for quite sometime before starting this course. I decided this

would be a perfect opportunity to finally visit and also look at this as not only a learning

opportunity, but also, a teaching opportunity. Although, many of my peers talked about this

museum, none had actually visited, so the comments I had heard of this place were very

vague and mainly comments like it is a good cultural museum. Regardless, I was excited to

visit the site for myself which did not disappoint. The museum offers many galleries and a

garden. Among the exhibitions included are: Spirits and Headhunters: Art of the Pacific

Islands, Ancient Arts of China: A 5000 Year Legacy, and California Legacies: Missions and

Ranchos. There is also a Kidseum related to Bowers Museum which is all interactive and I

found to be very entertaining. The museum is not based on solely one culture, but various

cultures.

Before visiting the Bowers Museum, I would like to have my students first learn

about the history of Bowers Museum and how it came to be. The property was owned by

Charles and Ada Bowers who donated the land to Santa Ana. The building was constructed

after the death of Ada Bowers in 1931 but remained closed due to the great depression.

Bowers Museum is a Mission styled building that opened in 1936. The museum later

adopted the Kidseum in 1994, which is is an interactive childrens museum and learning

center.
 Ada and Charles Bowers

Ada and Charles Bowers home before it

got thrown down to rebuild a museum.

Bowers Museum today.

 Other information my students can learn about before visiting the site includes

learning about the California missions, presidios, and the fathers of the missions. Also since

this is an art museum, I would like to have various art slides related to art that they might

find at the museum and have the students group them by style and put them into categories

they believe they belong to. I would put this museum fieldtrip appropriate for fourth and

fifth graders under my history section. This is beneficial for students to learn about

different cultures outside of their community.

A lot of the times, when coming to a museum for a school field trip, the tours can

sometimes begin late. In any case, the students before starting the tour would be put into

two separate groups and play a game of jeopardy with the information that has and will be

presented to them at the museum. A good way to wake the students up and get them to

start thinking more in depth of the contents inside the museum.

Activities students can participate in based on the content of Bowers museum:

1. In the Spirits and Headhunters exhibition they will learn about amulets and their

significance to the owners. Using Blooms taxonomy higher level thinking: Design

your own amulet including elements that reflect your own culture and elements that

reflect your own personality.

2. Using Blooms taxonomy lower thinking level: Describe the different ways cultures

prepared a celebration based on what you learned from the different exhibitions.

3. Using Blooms taxonomy lower thinking level: Compare and contrast how art varied

from culture to culture.

4. Using multiple intelligences linguistic: write a journal entry putting yourself in the

shoes of one of the cultures you have learned in Bowers museum

 5. Using multiple intelligences musical: During the Pacific Islanders exhibition we

witnessed how different their musical instruments appeared then to now. Compare

and contrast how musical instruments have now changed.

6. Using multiple intelligences spatial: create a painting to your best ability using one

style of your choice that we viewed at the Bowers museum.

7. Using multiple intelligences bodily kinesthetic: during the First Californias

exhibition we learned how weaved baskets were a part of daily life. Create a replica

of the basket that stood out to you the most.

8. Using multiple intelligences interpersonal: During one of the galleries we came

across Charles Percy painting of La Buena Ventura and learned how the painting

sparks many questions. Create a set of questions that you would ask Charles Percy

in an interview to learn more about the painting.

9. Using multiple intelligences logical-mathematical: create a timeline of three

different cultures that you learned about at Bowers museum and highlight their

successes and information that stood out to you the most.

10. Using multiple intelligences intrapersonal: choose one gallery and reflect on how

the art made you feel and how they have impacted the world.

After the students have visited the site and learned about different cultures I would

like the students to on a paper reflect on how the museum made an impact on them. I

would also like them to list three different things they learned from the museum and what

stood out to them the most.