Anderson Children's Foundation

Coachella Valley History Museum

Explore (2023-2024)

EXPLORE is a year-round comprehensive educational program for children ages 8-14. Housed on the historic Coachella Valley History Museum’s safe and welcoming campus, children expand their horizons in various after-school and summer programs. EXPLORE Summer meets Monday to Friday for two hours during four weekly programs in June focused on exploring a variety of art mediums. EXPLORE After-School meets on Mondays and Wednesdays from 3 to 5:30 p.m. for two seven-week sessions, each with a different history focus.

EXPLORE provides a positive social and emotional environment where children work in multi-age groupings and develop respect and patience for the needs of one another. Children celebrate diversity and equity for each other in these mixed-grade level groupings while engaging in meaningful activities.

In Fall 2023, children will learn about the physical desert environment and how it influenced the Cahuilla Indian’s way of life. Children will master drawing techniques as they create murals of an early Indian village. In the winter program, children will “become” one of the early settlers at the Living History Festival as they portray a local historical figure and use primary sources to examine how life has changed over time.

EXPLORE Young at Art offers a relaxed environment where self-expression is encouraged and celebrated. In the drawing class, children learn lines, contour lines, circles, and how to enlarge a drawing using a grid. Colored pencils are used to draw animals. Self-portraits, charcoal drawings, shading, and perspectives are explored. In watercolor classes, children learn primary and secondary colors, brush strokes, create a color wheel, mix colors, and explore painting effects such as wax resist, alcohol drops, salt, credit card, plastic wrap, towels, and a toothbrush. In ceramics class, students learn various molding techniques to develop their pottery. Children experience the complete process from construction and design to painting glazes on their pots. The museum is fortunate to have a kiln on campus where projects can be fired.

Our goal is to provide engaging educational opportunities for children to EXPLORE the artistic and historical resources of the museum. EXPLORE provides a cost-effective educational program where every session includes a healthy snack, engaging child-centered activities, and outdoor physical development for the after-school program with old-fashioned games such as croquet, horseshoes, hopscotch, jump rope, and more! In EXPLORE Art, children experiment with different art media, from drawing with pencils, charcoal, and pastels to watercolor and tempera painting, multimedia sculpture projects, and ceramics classes in the art studio.

Junior Historian Program (2017-2018, 2015-2016, 2014-2015)

Junior Historians is an educational program based at the Coachella Valley History Museum. This program provides children in the Coachella Valley with hands-on learning about history on museum campus. Students in the Valley need a safe and cool environment to explore and learn. This program is based on Common Core State Standards and California History-Social Science Curriculum.

Junior Historians is offered twice a year, in the summer and in the winter. Summer is a four-week camp with each week covering a different section in American history, geography, and government. Winter is an eight week after school program focused on local history in the Coachella Valley, such as the Cahuilla Indians. The program implements various methods to teach these themes such as: kinesthetic, touch, sight, and auditory. Some of our exciting methods involve children creating airplanes to understand the process of flight during World War II, and pretending to be local figures like General Patton at our Heritage Festival.

In low-scoring schools, children do not have the time to focus on social studies due to intense concentration on reading, writing and math skills. We aim to bridge the gap in one of the four major subjects, allowing students to appreciate history. The curriculum is designed by Dr. Priscilla Porter author of the Reflection social studies textbook used in many school in Desert Sands Unified School District. The grant from the Anderson Children’s Foundation supports the growth of the program and the amount of children it benefits.