Museum Scholarship Program Created In Collaboration With Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank
Published on Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Sandwich, Cape Cod, MA (April 2010) - Do you remember your first museum visit? Many of us experienced a museum for the first time while on a school field trip. Unfortunately, fewer children today are able to participate in museum trips as financial pressures force schools to eliminate them.
Heritage Museums & Gardens and the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank Charitable Foundation Trust are pleased to announce the creation of a scholarship program established to expose more students across Cape Cod to museum learning experiences by eliminating the burden of field trip funding for schools. Classrooms from pre-K to eighth grade across Cape Cod were invited this fall to apply for the opportunity to visit Heritage to participate in one of 13 different educational experiences on a range of museum topics, including assembly line production of automobiles, bird adaptations, New England whaling history, historical and contemporary uses of plants, the lives of Revolutionary War soldiers and more. Each interactive program is accompanied by information and activities designed to help connect the museum program to classroom curriculum.
Exposure to creative learning at cultural institutions is important to children's academic development. Museums provide resources that schools cannot duplicate that students use to make hands-on connections to art, history and science through the study of real objects, including artifacts and living plants. The benefits of school field trips to museums have been shown to reach even further. Research demonstrates that early museum experiences are important, and actually help shape individuals who become museum advocates and enjoy many different types of museums in adulthood.
The Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank recognizes the value of meaningful educational experiences at museums and the impact that these experiences have on young people. The Cape Cod 5 Scholarship, established by a generous grant from the Bank’s Charitable Foundation Trust, will underwrite museum admission, program fees and round-trip transportation costs for up to eight Cape Cod schools selected each year in both 2010 and 2011. On the establishment of this scholarship, David B. Willard, Secretary of the Foundation, says, “What better way for students to understand the relevance and relationship of history to the present than to transport them to one of the premier destinations on all of Cape Cod, Heritage Museums & Gardens?” The scholarship selection committee is pleased to announce that the spring 2010 scholarship recipients are Chatham Middle School, Dennisport I Cape Cod Child Development Center, The Laurel School in Brewster and West Parish Family School in West Barnstable.
If you would like to learn more about this scholarship program or school programming at Heritage Museums & Gardens, please call Amanda Meyer at 508-888-3300 x160 or email ameyer@heritagemuseums.org.