On a college campus packed with students and the overly rambunctious football fans on weekends, family enrichment at the University may seem rare.

Hillary Brown, director of public relations at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Ga., shows pieces of painted canvas included in the backpack one receives when participating in the backpack tour at the Georgia Museum of Art. SARAH OSBOURNE/Staff

At the Georgia Museum of Art, however, families won’t only learn about art, but have fun doing it.

The museum has started its backpack tours for families and elementary school students to better understand art.

“We were trying to figure out how to teach about art in different ways,” said Hillary Brown, director of communications at The Georgia Museum of Art. “You want landscapes that look different and can teach different things.”

The self-directed tour is an effort to appeal to children by incorporating four themes into understanding artwork of American artists. Visitors receive four folders filled with contents on different paintings scattered throughout the gallery. The packets include activities for the children to do as they review each work of art. The activities associated with the artworks are meant to reinforce what they are taught on the tour.

Pieces by artists such as Jacob Lawrence and Childe Hassam are included in the tour to teach children about color, texture, lighting and brush strokes.

One activity has children draw an aspect of American life and then describe it. Another has the children rearrange shapes on a felt board to create art that is centered on shapes.

“We wanted an overview of works that would work well with children,” said Carissa DiCindio, curator of education.

Hillary Brown said the purpose of the backpack tours is to teach the fundamentals and importance of art. SARAH OSBOURNE/Staff

The tour was originally brainstormed by former intern and Red & Black editorial cartoonist Sarah Quinn, who wanted to create a tour where families and children would feel more comfortable in a museum setting.

The project was then taken over by Melissa Rackley, curatorial assistant, who played a significant role in selecting the pieces for the tour.

“What we really wanted was for the children to connect what they saw in the museum with what they saw in their own lives,” DiCindio said.

Many of the pieces selected were purchased by the Museum’s first director, Alfred H. Holbrook. Many of the works included in the tour are by American impressionists and modernists.

Holbrook was known for his particular taste and often chose pieces that were known for their metaphorical meaning, Brown said.

Brown discussed the paintings in the tour, which includes a Winslow Homer piece depicting an African-American boy holding a sunflower to symbolize educational growth. Another piece in the tour was a red barn painted by Georgia O’Keefe. This particular painting is one of O’Keefe’s earlier works, which generally focus on flowers.

Though the backpack tour has been open for a few weeks, the museum has yet to see any visitors — but Brown thinks that will change.

“We hope they learn that art can be fun, but also learn something,” Brown said.