Museum Experience

Turning the Page partners with local and Smithsonian museums to connect families to Washington, D.C.'s many resources. D.C.'s wide range of museums provides a variety of educational opportunities and new ways to learn. By partnering with these organizations, Turning the Page is able to organize innovative family museum trips.

Turning the Page helps parents take advantage of D.C.'s cultural resources and extend their children's learning by sponsoring Saturday visits to area museums. Turning the Page provides free snacks, educational materials, and transportation.

Visits to partner museums are:

• Closely tied into D.C.'s educational achievement standards;


• Led by experienced museum staff, focused hands-on activities and coordinated with related classroom projects to reinforce the students' regular academic program; and


• Supplemented by TTP-provided books, posters, activity sheets and other learning materials available from the museums and additional resources connected to the museums.

In 2008, Turning the Page continued to offer free museum trips to families at our partner schools in order to provide a way to continue family learning experiences beyond the Community Nights season. TTP museum trips ranged from exploring submarines and boarding a warship at the U.S. Navy Museum, to being a TV reporter at the Newseum, to donning life-vests and taking a pontoon trip down the Anacostia River. Participants were led on private tours and provided with materials and children's books related to the exhibits they visited.

Delonda Johnson commented on why she enjoys attending Turning the Page's summer museum trips, "It is a great family outing. I love the opportunity to interact with other parents. It is always a plus to get more literature and reading materials for my child."