I never rode in a school bus until I was in high school, so I’m pretty sure I was never on a school trip beyond walking distance. I remember one about a block and a half to the public library, where I learned the meaning of the word “double flie”. I think we probably considered a fire drill to be a field trip. World War Two was a simpler time.
5th grade-Scripps Institution of Oceanography
I went to a Catholic school grades 1-3. They didn’t do field trips.
Been there, done that; 1961, but it was still there well into the '80s.
Five years later we went to a lead, offset printing press. Didn’t know it was still a thing.
First or Second grade we went to a Brick-making company on the outskirts of town (Wadsworth, Ohio). Got to stand inside one of the kilns and got a small commemorative brick (I think I still have , 60 years later, but no idea exactly where).
First I remember would have to be Palo Alto Baylands although all I really remember is that there were ducks and we learned about how salt is made.
My first field trip was probably to the Museum of History and Industry in Seattle. We went several times in my earlier years of school. But we did the dairy farm thing, too, so that may have been that instead.
We also went to the Seattle Times to see how newspapers got made and to KCTS to stand in front of a real live television camera and see ourselves on a monitor. This all happened in the mid-sixties.
I think in kindergarten we went to a farm, the zoo, and the circus, but I don’t remember which came first. Probably the farm since we each got to take home a pumpkin.
I grew up in Toronto, so in first grade, it was the Royal Ontario Museum. We saw the dinosaur skeletons and the Egyptian mummies. They saved the more boring stuff until we got older.
The earliest one I remember was to look at the Roman ruins in Chester. There are several small sites all over the city, but all I remember was the bit of mosaic that was inside an Italian restaurant- which was in the middle of serving lunch.
It was a trip to the Brookfield Zoo, in suburban Chicago (about 15 miles from our school, in the far western suburbs). Probably during first grade.
Depends what you call a field trip. I remember going to the milk treatment facility once, but around the same time we also went on a hike up a big hill and back. Cannot remember for the life of me why we did it. I was around 8 years old, I think.
The Heinz factory once (pickle pin!!!). the zoo where one of the teachers got stung by a bee and fainted and fell off the bench.
But the most memorable was a bus trip to visit a court. On which trip I found out I should never sit in the back of a bus as I was puking the whole time.
Second grade, a milk processing plant. They also made Popsicles which was much more interesting to me. I also saw the word quiescently (on the wrapper) but it was years later before I figured they meant the treat is simply frozen rather than stirred like ice cream is.
Went to a cookie factory in 2nd or 3rd grade. As we left each kid was given a package of cookies. On the bus ride back to the school, some kids ate their cookies, other like me were saving their package. My package of cookies disappeared just before we got back to the school, likely taken by one of the cookie eaters.
A visit to a banana warehouse where I learned that there are big rooms full of bananas that had come from somewhere hot. There was also a man that showed us a big spider and told some scary stories about poisonous spiders. Not a place for an arachnophobe to work.
The first out of town visit was an all day coach trip to London for the Science and Natural History Museums. I acquired an abiding hatred of worksheets.
We went to the County Fair at the start of every year. Cows, 4H kids raising rabbits, giant pumpkins and sunflowers, the whole 9 yards. I’m a little surprised that I’m the first one to mention this. I thought all rural kids took field trips to the fair.
I’m surprised ANY rural kids had field trips to the fair. All the fairs around here are during the late summer, specifically before school starts - because most of the rural kids have to work the fair with the families who show.
Since 3/4 of my class lived on dairy farms, that wouldn’t have been much of a field trip!
So we went to a local cheese factory. Must have been 1st or 2nd grade. And I hated cheese at the time, but the process was fascinating. This was in the late 60s, when we still had milk trucks that delivered, too.
Sometime around then, but I’m not sure which trip was first, we went to the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.
I don’t remember if it was Sea World or the Cleveland Zoo. First or second grade. I actually have a picture from the trip that I put on Facebook, of me and a bunch of other dorky looking scrubs.
I always remember being excited about packed lunches for field trips, because my mom had to give us juice boxes or Capri Sun, which we NEVER had otherwise. Yum!