skip navigation

Recommended Field Trips

Fun, Focused Field Trips

Need help planning a focused field trip? Museum educators have matched teachers' most sought-after science topics with Museum exhibits, films, and presentations to create suggested field trip itineraries. Use these pathways for learning as sample guides as you make your way through the Exhibit Halls. Note: Some offerings may require separate tickets.

We also offer downloadable, themed guides for your chaperones to bring with them on your field trip. Visit our Field Trip Activity Sheets section for more information.

Design a Field Trip for:

Earth & Space Science

Dinosaurs & Fossils

Learn about these colossal creatures of the past.
Grades Pre K - 8

  • Step off the bus and into a model of a giant dinosaur footprint in the Museum's front plaza. What can you infer from its position, depth, and shape?
  • For more dinosaurs, explore Dinosaurs: Modeling the Mesozoic and Colossal Fossil: Triceratops Cliff to examine fossils, life-size models, and even dinosaur dung to gain a sense of how paleontologists compile evidence.
  • Natural Mysteries offers the chance to explore fossils of animals and plants that lived long ago.
  • Last, visit the Discovery Center with younger learners (pre K - 2) andexamine a Discovery Box, or check out rocks, minerals, and fossils.

Related Chaperone Guide: A Day of Dinosaurs

What's the Weather?

Learn about the basic principles of weather and other natural forces.
Grades 3 - 8

  • Explore the fundamentals of weather and try your hand at "nowcasting" at the WeatherWise exhibit.
  • When available, catch a 20-minute Making Weather presentation, to find out how air, water, and temperature create weather, and see a cloud and a snowstorm form onstage!
  • Middle school groups also may request a special, 25-minute Climate Change presentation.
  • A viewing of Stormchasers or Forces of Nature brings the hair-raising power of weather to life.
  • Finish the day with a visit to the Theater of Electricity for a dazzling indoor lightning show.

Related Chaperone Guide: What's the Weather?

Life Sciences

Eye Spy Science

Encounter the connections between organisms and their environments.
Grades Pre K - 2

  • Uncover the world's hidden patterns by applying classifications skills in Natural Mysteries.
  • Attend a Live Animal presentation and watch an educator introduce one of the more than 100 animals that reside in our Live Animal Center.
  • Visit the Discovery Center to observe small animals at close range, examine rocks, and use magnifying glasses and microscopes with the aid of staff and volunteers.
  • Explore the classic dioramas in New England Habitats and consider the natural environments of animals.

Related Chaperone Guide: Looking Closely at the Natural World

Insects

Discover the amazing adaptations of insects, the most diverse group of animals on Earth.
strong>Grades K - 3

  • Begin the day in the Butterfly Garden, a living exhibit filled with sunlight, plants, and free-flying butterflies. Download the Butterfly Behavior Scavenger Hunts guide (PDF). What traits and behaviors do the butterflies share? (A special reserved program for grades K - 3 is available on Wednesday mornings.)
  • Continue on to the Bugs! 3-D film, which explores insect life through the adventures of a praying mantis and a butterfly in the lush Borneo rainforest.
  • Head over to the Making Models exhibit and examine the giant grasshopper model: How does it help us understand about insects?
  • Finish the day with a visit to Natural Mysteries to practice the skills of sorting and grouping organisms and to explore thousands of items — including insects — from the Museum's extensive natural history collection.

Related Chaperone Guide: Insects

Animal Adaptations

Examine animal adaptations and survival strategies while observing live animals.
Grades 3 - 8

  • Learn about diversity and variability within a species by observing animals throughout the Museum.
  • Examine hundreds of animals from the Museum's collections in A Bird's World and Natural Mysteries exhibits.
  • In the Human Body Connection, watch chicks hatching or observe and record the behaviors of the cotton-top tamarin monkeys using the Cotton-top Tamarin Observation Data Sheet.
  • Don't miss a Live Animal presentation on the Shapiro Family Science Live! Stage to learn more about nature from the scaly, furry, and feathered residents of our own Live Animal Center.
  • Explore the diversity of life with one of the many life sciences Omni films.

Related Chaperone Guide: Animal Adaptation

Evolution and Natural Selection

A walk through the Museum reveals evidence for biological evolution.
Grades 6 - 8

  • Begin in the Human Body Connection, where you can learn about human evolution by examining models of fossil hominids and explore natural selection and evidence for evolution through hands-on activities and demonstrations. While there, observe a lively family of cotton-top tamarin monkeys and talk to a Museum educator to find out how these animals are related to us.
  • Catch a Live Animal presentation on the Shapiro Family Science Live! Stage and learn about how it has adaptive features.
  • Examine what fossil evidence can tell us about animals that lived millions of years ago in Colossal Fossil: Triceratops Cliff.
  • Take your Evolution Adventure worksheets to Natural Mysteries. With the four-page study programs, you can learn the evolution stories of some of the most popular organisms in the Exhibit Halls.

Technology & Engineering

Simple Machines & Engineering

Practice problem solving through the engineering design process.
Grades 3 - 8

Related Chaperone Guide: Simple Machines and Engineering

Mathematics

Patterns and Measurement

Examine the dimensions that shape our world.
Grades K - 3

Related Chaperone Guide: Patterns and Measurement

Graphing

Uncover the numbers behind movement, weather, and the human body.
Grades 3 - 5

  • Take a mathematical walk in Science in the Park and see how closely related mathematics can be to the activities of everyday life, such as walking, moving, swinging, and spinning.
  • Create a graph of your movement in the Investigate! A See-for-Yourself Exhibit.
  • Interpret and create graphs through the Human Body Connection.
  • Discover how meteorologists collect and interpret data and graphs in the WeatherWise exhibit.
  • Complete the Graphical Stories activity sheet as you explore.

Models, Puzzles, and Shapes

See how mathematics can decipher life's mysteries.
Grades 4 - 8

Related Chaperone Guide: Models, Shapes, and Puzzles

Scale

Discover how changes in size define perception.
Grades 4 - 8

  • Scientists and mathematicians use models to understand the real world. Models take the place of things that may be too big or too small to work with directly. Look for how Museum exhibits vary in scale by starting in Making Models. Compare and consider the scales used in models of Mt. Everest and a giant grasshopper.
  • Use your mathematical skills to shrink a prehistoric creature in Dinosaurs: Modeling the Mesozoic.
  • Notice the scale of different models throughout the area including the Transportation and Machines exhibit.
  • Visit Seeing Is Deceiving and find an illusion in which an object appears to grow larger or smaller while you stare at it.