Baltimore suburbia in the 60s - so I went to DC more times than I can count. I remember touring an FBI facility, and of course, the Smithsonian. Back before there was an Air and Space Museum, the rockets were kept at the Castle.
The only other trip I remember was to Hershey, PA. We toured a museum and the chocolate factory before being turned loose in the park. Back then, the factory was pretty well open - I recall standing near a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE rectangular vat of chocolate watching these massive mechanical arms go back and forth in this warm brown semi-liquid. The smell of chocolate was pervasive and almost overwhelming. I also recall getting a goody bag at the end of the tour.
I know I went to a lot of museums and the zoos in Baltimore and DC, and I remember a trip to Philadelphia, but I don’t remember which were school trips and which were family outings. It *was *a few years ago…
In Australia they are called ‘excursions’ and typically are to places like museums, planetariums or aquariums. However, we also do ‘camps’ here, which means the school year group are bundled off to a site many miles away from civilization to pit their skills against the elements (and the teachers) to survive for a week or so.
It’s more likely that the* teachers* need a spell of medical leave afterwards.
In fifth grade the whole class went to a girl scout camp for a three days to do nature stuff. That was fun.
Fourth grade was a trip to Old Fort Niagara to see the fort.
My middle school was next to one of the high schools that actually had a planetarium! We would walk over as a class to see stuff.
High school- every year there was an optional trip to see the Shakespearean performance in Stafford, ONT. In our Jr. year the advanced french class did 4 days in Quebec City.
I went to elementary school in the Philly 'burbs, so Independence Hall, Betsy Ross House, etc. Also the Wawa (local milk bottler, at the time – they’ve since evolved into convenience stores and gas stations) plant and a bakery.
High school was in San Diego – the tidepools at Point Loma, the zoo, the Globe Theater, the Wild Animal Park soon after it opened.
It seemed like every other field trip was to either the Henry Ford Museum (Dearborn, MI) or Cedar Point (Sandusky, OH.) I do remember some minor trips to places like science museums in Ann Arbor, the Detroit Zoo, and to a baseball game for the Detroit Tigers.
In middle school there were only three trips: Chicago, Washington D.C, and Cedar Point again.
In high school, there were also just a few trips: the Detroit Zoo again, some place in Oxford Canada for some plays, and Cedar Point again.
Since I was in Upward Bound, we had some cool field trips. There was Mackinac Island, kayaking, ropes courses, Williamsburg, VA, Chicago, NYC, Disneyworld, a week in Quebec, a week in Puerto Rico.
I lived outside Philadelphia, and we went to the Franklin Institute and always had to walk through that heart, which freaked me out. Once we went to the Herr Potato Chip Factory fActory and got free potato chips, which was fun. Once we went to the printing press of the local newspaper, which fascinated me.
We could have done that, I wonder why we never did? The school was surrounded by cotton fields and we used to pick cotton and ladybugs through the fence, but we never actually visited cotton fields or learned about them. Or we could have gone to pecan orchards or something.
Kyla, that is weird that you never built missions. I think it’s a requirement or something, I’ve never heard of it not happening, though some kids I know had brilliant genius teachers who did them as group projects in class so that parents couldn’t build them.
We moved when I was in 6th grade and I managed to miss science camp in both schools.
I grew up in south-central Connecticut, and the field trips were to places like Mystic Seaport/Mystic Aquarium, Sturbridge Village, Boston MA, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo, the state capitol in Hartford, Mark Twain’s house/Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house, etc.
And another one of the “standard” field trips was to Hyde Park NY, home of one of the mansions owned by the Vanderbilt family and FDR’s home, presidential library and gravesite. (A couple of guys from a high school field trip there supposedly had a picture of themselves mooning while standing on his tomb.)
I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama in the 60s. We went to a Coca-Cola bottling plant, a dairy and a firehouse. I also saw a play, Peter and the Wolf. There wasn’t much to see in Huntsville, apparently. I didn’t even know it had a museumuntil I was an adult. Now it has lots of cools places for schoolchildren to go.
Re: some others’ submissions: a winery? Really? How very … advanced.
And what does “building a mission” mean? Like Habitat for Humanity?
Earliest elementary school, I vaguely remember going to a hatchery, a fire station, and some sort of factory.
Middle elementary school, we went to various zoos around Tokyo, a silk museum, to the Great Buddha of Kamakura a few times, to some old Japanese castle, and to various gardens and shrines.
In late elementary and early middle school we went to Boston Children’s Museum, Boston Science Museum, RISD Art Museum, Hammond Castle, Gilbert Stuart’s birthplace (apparently compulsory for any kid who ever went to school in RI), and New England Aquarium.
I don’t remember any class field trips in high school. Everywhere we went was related to school organizations, teams, and clubs.
Looking back, we had awesome field trips. Now my kids are lucky if they go on one field trip a year, due to school budget cutbacks. Parents and PTA pay for most of them. (And we live near the freeeee Smithsonian museums and National Zoo.)
Western Washington in the '50s. We went to a dariy, Woodland Park Zoo, Fort Nisqually and every year, we went to the Puyallup Fair. We had to spend the first hour going to exibits (and collecting 10 pounds of brochures) then we were set free to eat, drink and ride ourselves sick. We had to be back at the busses at 4PM. No one supervised us after 3rd grade.
I was born and raised just outside of Washington, DC so I’ve been to nearly everything “historical” in the city on a field trip. National Zoo, Natural History Museum, American History, National Gallery of Art, Textile Museum, Corcoran, Lincoln Memorial, The Vietnam Memorial, the Capitol Children’s Museum, Air and Space, etc.
Okay, but you have to understand, this was wine country. That’s what there is to see.
Building a mission = building a model of a mission. When California was part of the Spanish colony of Mexico, the padres built a series of missions from south to north, in order to spread the Christian faith among the Indians. (Wikipedia article) Most of the large cities in California are built around their missions, and most of those cities take their names from their missions. For instance, San Francisco is named after Mission San Francisco de Asís (although weirdly, everyone calls in Mission Dolores now). Los Angeles is named after Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia (an asistencia was a sub-mission). San Diego is named for Mission San Diego de Alcalá. A lot of the missions are still standing (which is kind of impressive considering California’s geological issues) and are regular destinations for kids on field trips.
It’s part of the statewide 4th grade curriculum to do a unit on the missions and it’s typical that every kid has to build a model of one of them. (If you google “building a mission”, you’ll come up with lots of helpful hints for parents.) For some reason, I never did it, though, and I don’t know why. It is a standard assignment.
The North Carolina Zoo. We went there a few times, I think, and it was always amazing. But not as good as…
The Outer Banks. We took an overnight trip there in sixth grade, and went out on a trawling ship, and saw wild horses running across Carrot Island. but not as good as…
Florida. We took a train down there in fifth grade, visited Epcot Center, and watched a frickin space shuttle launch.
This was a public school; looking back, I’m not sure how we afforded it.
Oh, two more: in eighth grade, our English class went to Washington, D.C., and in tenth grade, a few of us Latin students went to Italy. but the last one might not count as a field trip.
Here in Austin, everyone went to the Mrs. Baird’s Bakery and to the natural history museum on the university campus. Later we would go to Six Flags up in Dallas.
If you go to California and drive on Highway 101, you’ll see all these bells with signs that say El Camino Real. 101 is pretty much built over the old Spanish road that connected the missions together–they were supposed to be within a day’s walk of each other, so you could walk the whole way.
