Engagement Strategies: Imagine your front door. What does it look like? What is found inside of it and outside of it? What makes it welcoming? (colors, windows) Is there a nice porch? Some plants? Are there lots of other doors in your building that lead to friends houses? What goes in and out of the door (people, pets, bugs, birds?) Is there anything that keeps bugs out? (screens)

You can tell a lot about people by the doors of their houses. Sometimes doors are real (possible props: door of museum) and sometimes they are imaginary or magical (possible prop: pictures of fairy doors in AA; magical doors such as wardrobe door in Narnia books)

Stop 1: Tintern Abbey, Ward

What would it be like to walk through these doors? What would you find inside? Do the people in the town notice the doors?

Stop 2: Havemeyer House Doors, Tiffany

These doors are different on the inside and outside. Who sees the outside and inside? How would it feel to be inside this house with all the mosaics and glass? The glass is pretty beautiful and clean. Who do you think cleans it? (servants) How would it feel to be outside? Would you expect to find the flashy stuff on the inside of these dark doors?

Stop 3: Funerary Shrine Cloth, African

This appliquéd cloth was placed over the front of a shrine for an important person who had died. Do you think many people would go inside? (probably not… but don’t know) The pictures on the outside tell you about the person inside.

Stop 4: Fire Engine Red, Dorothea Rockburne

What do you think is behind these “doors?” (let the children be imaginative here and make many suggestions. Remind them that the doors should indicate something about what is inside so they should be able to tell you what about the doors makes them think what they think about what they find inside.

Stop 5: Korean Screen

This screen was placed in a room. What kind of house would it be in? How can you tell? Who would live in the house? Each panel represents a scene from a season. Why do you think they would want that in their house? What would you find behind it?