Fourth-graders visit Tang Museum at Skidmore College

Marie Curie fourth-graders recently visited the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs.

The students were there to view an exhibit by Joseph Grigely, an artist who has been deaf since he was about 10 years old. Grigley's exhibit is an exploration of sound and is titled "St.Cecilia," after the Roman Catholic patron saint of music.

Grigely has learned to read lips, but sometimes it becomes too difficult to understand what people are saying. If that happens, he communicates through handwritten notes on scraps of paper, and one part of the exhibit features a wall of these notes which Grigely had collected over the years.

The exhibit was interactive, so students were able to participate. There was also an activity that allowed them to explore Morse code. Students built an object that represented a small sentence they came up with using beads and pipe cleaners to signify how their sentence would read in Morse code.

This was a great activity that held students' interest the whole time. This field trip tied into our communications magnet theme very nicely and enabled our students to visit a museum that they had never been to before.

To view a photo gallery of the exhibit, click here.