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In the past I've mentioned the Pacific Asia Museum but, as it's been a while since I last visited (this time last year) I thought I'd drop by... I love this place (and the little courtyard is so cool - literally!). Last year I walked around with a notebook, jotting down information and questions for a high school level extra credit hand-out in two of the Social studies classes I teach (sadly now deceased - my p.c. caught some malicious bug and erased everything, down to the wiring and, of course, I'd forgotten to back it up). It's just as good as I remembered, and I started looking for information that I can use teaching sixth and seventh grade.
For sixth grade, there's an excellent array of Buddhas and bodhisatvas, and the materials for a lesson demonstrating the ways in which a religion adapts itself to the pre-existing indigenous culture. A lot of the littlies are familiar with the rotund, rub-my-belly Buddha, and so it's valuable, I think, to be able to expose them to other personifications, both from various cultures and in different characterizations - for example, the thin, aesthetic Buddha to the serene Enlightened One, by way of adding dimension to the jolly fat man. (Check out the Thai Buddha - he's shown with an elongated face and graceful, willowy body, sometimes shown walking, a posture unique to Thailand.)
There are also wonderful representations of Hindu deities which, again, mesh nicely with the sixth grade curriculum - it's difficult trying to conjure up the brilliance and power of Hindu art and sculpture, short of being able to stand there in front of it 
The textbook illustrations can't do them justice (which, I guess, is true of a great deal of cultural artifacts and religious symbolism) and even overhead transparencies and powerpoint illustrations don't quite do the job as well.
There's a huge number of animal motifs to be found - everything from water buffalo to rabbits, turtles to deer, rooster to phoenix, crickets to the dragon king, and one or two mythical beasts that students may or may not be familiar with (including Garruda, the winged and beaked half-man/half-bird who accompanies Vishnu). These would make a great game of find-the-animal - for example, in the netsuke display alone there are 12 demons, 3 foxes, 2 dragons, and a monkey to be found. Students could then take notes from the information alongside each exhibit to discover the symbolism of each (the turtle for longevity, for instance) and describe the context - netsuke, ceramic bowl or other pottery, sculpture, wooden carvings...
I suspect that the only problem with bringing a field trip to this particular venue might be its size - having 36 + students in so confined an area may present problems... However, the museum does have a program for field trips (up to 60 students - available Wed., Thur., and Friday) which divides the students into smaller groups and gives them an hour-long docent-guided museum tour followed by an hour's worth of art workshop. Contact Lucy Solin on (626) 449-2742 ext. 22 to set up a date.
If a field trip is out of the question, there's always the museum's website. It's really comprehensive, and even has its own website-only exhibition: Nature of the Beast - Animals in Japanese Paintings and Prints (again with the animals!). And there are scads of other resources - right now I'm checking out their Chinese ceramics factsheets which complement the exibits. It's difficult sometimes having students understand such (seemingly) commonplace things like, what exactly is porcelain and how is it made? So the factsheets are a great resource for seventh - and probably tenth - grade Social Studies classes.
Overall,most highly recommended!
Ray[Edit by="rrobinson on Jul 11, 5:18:22 PM"][/Edit]