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Looking for things to do at home or school? Take a look at these worksheets and activities.

Art Gallery Explorer Cards
Pacific Printmaking
He Waka Eke Noa
Waka Huia

Explore our set of colouring activities based on works from our collection - check them out here. 

Have a go at curating your own exhibition with the works in our collection using My Gallery 

We would love to see your work when it's done - take a photo and send it to schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz or tag us on social media!

Discover Kāi Tahu artist Xoë Hall’s wild new mural celebrating atua wāhine with your class. Inside the Gallery students will compare Xoë’s work with some of the ways other artists have represented or acknowledged atua. They will then head to our Education Centre and make a collaborative collage that represents a Māori atua to take back to school.

Our lessons often book up fast but you are always welcome to bring your students on a self-guided tour of the Gallery. We have a wonderful resources for the Te Wheke: Pathways Across Oceania exhibition which you can use to guide your students through the spaces. Check out all of our current exhibitions here. 

Please ensure you go over the Gallery Guidelines with your students so that they are aware of expectations in the Gallery spaces.

Email schools@christchurchartgallery.org.nz and let us know when to expect you. so we are able manage any clashes with events and other tours. 

Students will take away an appreciation of art and consider a selection works that can cover a range of subjects, styles, media and purposes. The works viewed will be a selection from our current exhibitions. Students are expected to discuss and question what they see. Tours can be tailored to all levels.

Bookings essential.

Download our Gallery Guidelines below.

Take a guided tour of selected works in Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection and examine how artists use colour, space, form and pattern to activate the eye. During the tour students will make recordings to use in the Education Centre where they will create an abstract work of art to take back to school.

Explore the Gallery with your students, discuss a range of artists’ work and explore ideas of navigation, belonging, identity and how we are connected across time and place. During the guided tour students will use signs and symbols to create a pictorial map of their own identity and journey through the Gallery which they will then complete using watercolour and pastel in our Education Centre. A great lesson for preschoolers and junior primary students!

What is a portrait? On a guided tour of selected works in Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection students will consider how artists represent themselves and others in a range of different ways. In the Education Centre students will create a self-portrait to take back to school.

Brett Graham: Tai Moana Tai Tangata revisits the shared colonial history of Tainui and Taranaki Māori through the visual language of military architecture and war memorials. Connections are also made to our local history through the addition of a work made especially for Ōtautahi. Your students will take a tour of the exhibition, followed by a practical lesson in our Education Centre in which they will create a work to keep using one of the artist's sculpting techniques.

Available 5 November - 19 February

Discover the work of Barbara Tuck and a range of other artists exploring the distinctive landscapes of Aotearoa. After a guided tour of the Gallery, students will discuss the styles and techniques each artist has used and think about how they might influence our interpretation of a place. They will then create collaborative paintings in groups, each working on a piece of landscape before combining them to form a layered composition.

Available 15 October - 23 March

Top Art is an annual touring exhibition featuring a selection of the NCEA Level 3 portfolios that achieved Excellence in Visual Art in the previous year. Five streams are covered: design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture.

Top Art provides an opportunity for secondary students and teachers to gain an understanding of what is required to achieve Excellence at Level 3. It also allows members of the public to see the high quality art being created in schools.

This year the exhibition will be held in the Education Centre at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū from 4 April until 12pm 13 April

Book in a time for your class to visit – email Bianca van Leeuwen

To find out more visit - 

NZQA Top Art Page 

Top Art Facebook Page 

Be inspired by Salote Tawale and create your own colourful cardboard installation as a class! Salote is a Sydney-based Fijian artist who works in video, painting, sculpture, performance and installation to make work that focuses on cultural identity and self-representation. Students will take a guided tour of the installation and other works in the Gallery before getting creative in our Education Centre.

Available until 18 June

Dive into the many forms of printmaking on display in our exhibition Ink on Paper. Students will learn about different printing techniques and make sketches in the Gallery to build their mark-making skills before heading to our Education Centre to create a print of their own. Making options will be tailored to each year level (see below).

Preschool – Year 2: Stamp Making
Years 3 – 5: Monoprinting
Years 6 and up: Linocut

Available until 28 May

Do you really need a pencil and paper to draw? Explore our new collection-driven exhibition, which expands the idea of what drawing might be as a way of thinking and a creative strategy. Following the tour students will draw using some unexpected materials.

Available until 2 July

Come and experience Te Rā with your class. The only customary Māori sail still in existence, Te Rā has been held in the collection of the British Museum for more than 200 years. Later this year she[i] will be returning to Aotearoa for display at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, before journeying to Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum. A unifying symbol of the past, present and future, the homecoming of this fascinating taonga is a deeply significant moment – for tangata whenua especially, and for all New Zealanders.

At nearly four and a half metres long, Te Rā is made up of 13 woven papa, or panels, and a feathered matairangi (streamer). The complex three-way pattern of weaving that extends through the hono (joins) and panels of the sail is something not seen today within Māori weaving. Te Rā illustrates the centrality of both raranga and voyaging to Māori culture, as well as the deep connections with Polynesian histories, skills and knowledge. She represents exploration, expertise and adaptation –both the desire to explore new horizons and the extraordinary skills required to cross an ocean and adapt to life in a new world.

Students will be taken on a guided tour and then spend time in our Education Centre taking part in a hands-on activity that can be adapted to all levels.

[i] The senior Māori weavers involved in the project refer to Te Rā as a `Kuia’ or female elder.

Available 8 July – 23 October

Explore works from across Dame Robin White’s 50-year career with your class. Students will discuss the artist’s portraits and local landscapes from the 1970s, and the ambitious collaborative works she has made with artists from across the Pacific and Aotearoa New Zealand in recent years, including her masi collaborations with Pacific artists including Tamari Cabeikanacea and Ruha Fifita. Following the tour, students will respond to the exhibition in our education centre, creating a work to keep.

Exhibition developed by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and toured by Te Papa.

Available 22 July - 5 November