The Any Given Child Program

In 2012, the City of Fresno became the tenth U.S. city chosen by the Kennedy Center to participate in the Any Given Child (AGC) program. The program provides assistance in developing and implementing a plan for expanding arts education in the schools, ensuring access and equity to the arts for all students in grades K-8. The assistance from the Kennedy Center is in the form of professional development for teachers and administrators, advice, training, and guidance on arts integration. In partnership with the Fresno Office of the Superintendent of Schools (or FOSS, formerly known as FCOE for Fresno County Office of Education) the Fresno Art Museum was chosen as a partner to provide visual arts to teachers and students and became a visual arts destination for every third grader and their teachers in the Fresno Unified School District (FUSD), which has over 6,000 third grade students. During the 2017/18 school year, the program was expanded to include the Sanger Unified School District and another 1,000 third graders.

The Fresno Art Museum curates one exhibition annually, which focuses on illustrations and illustrators to support this program. In cooperation with the Office of the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools (FCSS) and Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) an arts-integrated unit plan has been created for third grade and can be downloaded on this page. The current exhibition is entitled  Art of the Word: The Simply Magnificent Art of Ashley Spires and features the art from the illustrated children's book The Most Magnificent Makers A to Z illustrated by Ashley Spires and published by Kids Can Press Ltd., Toronto, Canada. More information about the exhibition can be found by clicking here.

To download he newly revised and updated Unit Plan for the 2025/26 school year click the image below:


Supplemental material provided by the Museum includes links to information on five of the artists that inspire seven of the lesson plans and a list of new vocabulary that is explored in the Unit Plan. Click here to download those additional slides.

Watch our videos that support this program. Note that new Frida Kahlo lesson plan videos are in production and will be added here as soon as they are available. You should be able to follow the detailed lesson plans included in the Unit Plan referenced above.

The Unit Plan above is designed as a pre-visit and follow-up to the in-person Museum visit by Fresno Unified and Sanger Unified 3rd-grade students, however, any teacher is invited to use it with or without an actual visit. Note that many of the gallery tour videos are from previous Museum exhibitions. The current exhibition gallery walk-through for Art of the Word: The Simply Magnificent Art of Ashley Spires is in production and will be available here for virtual visits only or if you want to review the exhibition after your in-person visit.

What is a Museum? (a handout for students)

Suggestions for Teachers to prepare for your in-person museum visit

How to succeed at teaching an art lesson

Planning to visit the Fresno Art Museum with your school group? Click the image below to download a slide show to help your students prepare for their visit.