Blog #1: For this internship I am looking forward to shadowing tours and preparing for activities the museum holds. I am very excited to learn and go all of January to get a feeling of the workspace. I am very excited to be working with my friend to prepare a lesson plan. But I am very nervous about how the day to day work place looks and I am terrified of not being a fast learner and not being able to help or keep up. My hope for the project is to bring as much help as I can to every project or event the museum might hold. I hope to be proud of myself by the end of it realizing I made a small impact in the Mingei Museum. My main goal for the month is to work as hard as I can to help the museum and reflect to know if that type of career is the one I want to pursue. I think this experience will fit into my education by giving me an idea of what it is like to work at a fun museum that holds interactive events.
Blog #2
For my internship at the Mingei Museum I will be preparing an art project for “Mini Mingei” which is an event the museum holds for toddlers that will come in for about an hour to participate. I will use my cooperation and creative skills to discuss with my mentor and my internship buddy, Karla, to come up with an art project that toddlers can enjoy. I think the project will benefit the organization by giving them a creative project from younger minds and by letting usual mini mingei planners take a break. Over the course of my internship I see myself growing as an artist and learning teaching techniques and certain skills from my mentor and the workers there. For example, I helped Chiho with a program the museum held called “school in the park” where 3rd graders came in for a whole week and learned how to make paper and at the end of the week they made a booklet of their paper and got to take it home.
- What questions do you have about internship?
What is my big project, if there is one?
Blog #2
For my internship at the Mingei Museum I will be preparing an art project for “Mini Mingei” which is an event the museum holds for toddlers that will come in for about an hour to participate. I will use my cooperation and creative skills to discuss with my mentor and my internship buddy, Karla, to come up with an art project that toddlers can enjoy. I think the project will benefit the organization by giving them a creative project from younger minds and by letting usual mini mingei planners take a break. Over the course of my internship I see myself growing as an artist and learning teaching techniques and certain skills from my mentor and the workers there. For example, I helped Chiho with a program the museum held called “school in the park” where 3rd graders came in for a whole week and learned how to make paper and at the end of the week they made a booklet of their paper and got to take it home.
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Blog #3: Choose your favorite photos from internship so far
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Mini Mingei is a program the museum does every two fridays charging $7 per toddler, allowing them to come into the classroom space with their parent(s) to take part in an artistic activity that changes every two weeks. THey first com ein and gather on the mats for story time with a book related to the art activity that will take place. After story time they find a spot at the table where the instructor explains what the activity is and provides examples to give the toddlers an idea of what to do. they then participate and create their own art piece to take home with them. My final project will be me leading a Mini Mingei on February 3rd. I sat through this week's Mini Mingei to get a better feel and plan accordingly. The theme was archaeology so I drew the image that's on the blackboard and Karla wrote “Mini Mingei”. |
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In this picture I am drawing the archaeologist to go with the theme before the toddlers arrived.
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Karla and I are cutting tissue paper into circles of different sizes for the “Bunny Wall”. The Bunny Wall is an exhibition the museum has that allows visitors that come in to make the bunny wall. It is constructed of a cage with little squares making the circles fit in the square when pushed in with a pencil. On the wall behind the cage there is paint that the circles match to form an image.
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Karla working on the bunny wall.
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Blog #3
My project is going really well. I will be leading a Mini Mingei. Our idea is to make creature masks from paper plates, colored pom poms, pipe cleaners, colored paper, markers, googly eyes and paper straws. We want the toddlers to express their creativity so we decided to give them a little freedom into what creature they want to create. We remembered that when we were little we had a bigger imagination and were more creative so we wanted to see how their creatures were gonna turn out. We will be reading “Beautiful Oops” and “Dragons love tacos”. We want to read beautiful oops so they don't feel like they make a mistake because in art a mistake can easily be fixed. Dragons love tacos and will inspire their creatures because the drawings are really cool.
Blog #4:
For my project, choosing a topic, the books to read to the toddlers and time management to plan my project have been going really well. Some challenges I am facing are picking the materials to make a fun cool activity. I made a few mask examples, some with paper plates and some with colored foam but I am not entirely confident so next week my mentor and the people working in the education department will do a mock mini mingei where I will get feedback to improve the art activity.
Some advice I would give to a junior who wants to work at a museum while simultaneously also being in the teaching field is to pursue their dreams because they get to live both of their dreams. I would say it takes a lot of patience and attention to the kids and toddlers who come in for different programs. Working in the mingei museum also requires a lot of preparation for the different events, cutting tissue paper, cardboard, string, setting up the classroom for events, clean, heat press paper, etc. I would also advise them to intern to actually learn and experience to be hundred percent sure to choose that as their career.
Blog #5:
I will be going back to school next week and I feel like I got so used to waking up later than I usually do and got used to the pace at work that going back to school next week is going to be tough. My body got used to sleeping more and resting that next week when my alarm is set to wake me up at 6:45a.m. I am going to struggle. Especially during these days when I have a lot of basketball games and practices, I go home very tired. At work I wasn’t really doing projects or assignments that included due dates so getting back into that rhythm might take some time. I am looking forward to starting the new semester and finally seeing my friends on the daily again but I am going to miss the workplace and how welcoming of an atmosphere it has. Everyone is so nice and supportive that pushes me to do my best and keep working hard. I think this experience will help me a lot moving forward because my mentors gave me a lot of advice and I learned a few things on my own by observing.
