40+ Free Virtual Field Trips Your Kids Can Take From The Couch

Free virtual field trips can turn an ordinary day into an extraordinary day.  Whether it is with your virtual classmates, as part of a distance learning curriculum, a homeschool adventure, looking for educational activities or just for fun…we can’t wait to hear which virtual reality field trip was your favorite!

There are more more online learning opportunities than ever and they are a great way to take interactive tours. In some cases it is almost like building your own time machine! Let’s take a free field trip!

Below is a list of more than 40 different places you can explore online with your kids. Most of them don’t follow the school year calendar or regular operating hours for virtual field trip experiences.

This is going to be fun.

Free Virtual Field Trips for Kids

New virtual field trips are a great resource for high school, elementary, kindergarten or even preschool kids that will be filled with adventure. In fact, our first group of educational virtual tours are dream trips for my family.

Explore the United States Virtually

• Explore Yellowstone National Park with virtual tours of some of their famous sites, like Mammoth Springs. 
• Go for a swim and explore a coral reef in the Bahamas!
• Ever wondered what it’s like to be president? Visit the White House to see where he lives! <–really fun white house virtual tour for kids!
• This virtual field trip of Ellis Island comes with tons of educational resources.
• Visit the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History to see some of their current, past, and permanent exhibits. 
• Get a view of the Grand Canyon from above and see just how big it really is. 
• Get a live look at the Mount St. Helens volcano.
• I adore this way to tour the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with a 360-degree view!
• We have the scoop for visiting national parks through virtual programs and it is really fun!
• Visit the baboons at the San Diego Zoo with their live camera feeds! 
• Have sports fans at home? Take a look around Yankees Stadium, then go to see where the Dallas Cowboys play.
• Get up-close and personal with a shark at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
• Learn about the U.S. Civil War by visiting important locations and people.
• The panda cam at Zoo Atlanta is too cute to miss. 
• Enjoy the view from the top deck of the Empire State Building.
• Check out giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and even ants at the Houston Zoo.
• Visit the National Aquarium in Baltimore to see even more sea life.
• You can see beluga whales, sea lions, and explore the Ocean Voyager at the Georgia Aquarium.
• Go inside the Alamo to see where frontiersman Davy Crockett made his final stand.
• Visit Arthur and friends in a kid-friendly exhibit at the Boston Children’s museum. 

 

Virtually Explore the World  

• Go on an expedition to the Galapagos Islands on the ship Endeavor II with National Geographic.
• How about a virtual tour of the Great Wall of China from your computer screen. 
• Walk among the Moai monolithic statues carved more than 500 years ago by the people who lived on Easter Island.
• My kiddo is obsessed with Ancient Greece — I can’t wait to show him this virtual field trip!
• Walk through Egyptian pyramids and learn about their excavation.

• Learn more about the Amazon Rainforest with an educational tour that shows all the sites and sounds.
• How about an adventure sailing through Antarctica?
• What was life like in a 17th century English village? Now you can see for yourself.
• Climb through the world’s largest cave, Hang S?n ?oòng, in Vietnam.
• Take a trip to Jerusalem and see the Dome of the Rock, the Damascus Gate, and learn about the history of the city. There’s even a version for older grades.
• See all of Galileo’s cool inventions at the Museo Galileo.
• Oh, and don’t miss the Hockey Hall of Fame to see the Stanley Cup!
• Stroll through the home of the Royal Family with this tour of Buckingham Palace.
• Observe polar bears in the tundra of Canada on this Discovery Education virtual field trip.
• Take an african safari to the Etosha National Park in Namibia, Africa.
• Check out exhibits from the Louvre via one of their educational virtual museum tours.
• Tour the British Museum with a guided tour or tour collections from the British Museum through Google Arts.
• Want to visit a museum exhibit from home?  Check out our guide to the best virtual museum tours online!
• Yay! Virtual farm tours will let kids visit and learn how milk, cheese and other dairy products are processed.
• Here’s another virtual African safari — this time with elephants and hyenas in the wild!
• Download the Google Expeditions app for more than 900 different virtual reality experiences, including a NASA mission to Jupiter and a look at Mount Everest!

 

Space Exploration Tour

• You don’t need a spaceship to visit Mars virtually, thanks to this awesome website where you can walk alongside a rover on the surface of Mars.
• Tour the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama with this video.
• Go behind the scenes of the Space Launch System program at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. 
• Learn about the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing.
• Turn your computer into a planetarium with this virtual view of the stars and constellations.
• Check out what you can visit virtually at the International Space Station…now that is cool!

Interactive and Fun Virtual Field Trips

Digital field trips are extra fun because you can take more than one in a day.  Children can check out the Amazon rainforest in the morning, stop by the Grand Canyon while eating lunch and then…visit Mars?

Learning geography, sociology, science, social studies while virtually meeting people with different cultures within their different societies gives kids a great opportunity to understand their rituals and daily lives while fostering a feeling of connection and understanding of a wide range of cultures.

Explore the World for Free

Some of my kids favorite field trip ideas for middle schoolers and high schoolers revolve around animals.  I know we often think of zoos and animal parks as younger kid activities — preschool, kindergarten and elementary school — but they are appropriate virtual field trips for all ages (even my advanced age!).

We can’t wait to hear what you have explored with online field trips. Did you get together with school groups ?

Did you explore them on your own?

Which panoramic tour was your favorite?

 

More Educational Fun & Adventures from Kids Activities Blog

• We shared a list of education companies offering free subscriptions to keep your kids learning at home — it can also be used for enrichment activities after school.
• Take a virtual tour of some of the coolest places on earth.
• Take a virtual train ride with these amazing train videos for kids.
• Make a paper city to learn about architecture!
• Help your kids learn how to make bubbles at home!
• 5 minute crafts are so fun and easy!
• Check out over 50 printable easy drawing tutorials for kids…and adults :).
• Follow along and develop awesome coloring skills with our cool drawings series by a 16 year old artist.
• Looking for some learning activities to use at home or in the classroom…we’ve got ya!
• Or some science activities you can do with kids that use things you likely already have at home.
• And don’t miss out on all the really great coloring pages.

What virtual field trip are you going to do first?