Homeschool field trips in New York City
Museums, gardens, libraries and historic sites across the five boroughs. None of them runs a homeschool day: New York's institutions price a school visit by school type, so a co-op books at the private school rate.
44 places · Checked September 11, 2026
What a visit counts toward in New York
Time spent here counts toward New York's 900 required hours a year, or 990 from 7th grade. Each listing below names which of New York's required subjects a visit supports, in the wording the statute uses.
Using 900 hours for a seventh grader
The requirement rises from 900 to 990 hours at grade 7. A household with children on both sides of that line is tracking two different annual targets, and the higher one is easy to forget until June.
Check New York's homeschool requirements before you count anything toward them.
44 of 44 places
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Manhattan · All grades · Free
The rediscovered burial ground of free and enslaved Africans in colonial New York, with a memorial above and an interpretive centre alongside.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Alice Austen House
1.3 hrs
Staten Island · K-12 · Fee; suggested admission
The cottage where Alice Austen made seven thousand photographs, with programmes on her work and on Staten Island's immigrant history.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · All grades · Fee; free weekday general admission for NYC school groups
Forty-five permanent halls, the blue whale, the Hayden Sphere and enough dinosaur floor to lose an afternoon in one wing.
Counts toward New York's required science and social studies.
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Asia Society Museum
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · All grades · Fee; free for visitors 16 and under and free on Fridays
The Rockefeller collection of Asian art alongside contemporary work, with docent tours running 45 to 90 minutes.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum
1.5 hrs
Bronx · All grades · Fee; flat rate per class
An 1842 Greek Revival house on Pelham Bay with a walled garden, and a programme on the Lenape of the Bronx alongside the house tours.
Counts toward New York's required science, social studies, and visual arts.
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Bronx Zoo
4 hrs
Bronx · PreK-12 · Fee; free limited admission for NYC students
Two hundred and sixty-five acres, with the Congo Gorilla Forest and JungleWorld, run by the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Counts toward New York's required science.
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Brooklyn Botanic Garden
1.5 hrs
Brooklyn · PreK-8 · Fee; preregistered school groups visit free
Fifty-two acres with a Japanese hill-and-pond garden and a children's garden the children actually plant and dig.
Counts toward New York's required science.
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Brooklyn · PreK-Grade 5 · Fee; free Thursday afternoons
The oldest children's museum in the world, founded 1899, with a collection of thirty thousand objects children are meant to handle.
Counts toward New York's required science, english, and visual arts.
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Brooklyn Museum
2 hrs
Brooklyn · K-12 · Fee; free for all Brooklyn public schools and NYC Title I
Egyptian collections of real depth, American period rooms, and a feminist art centre built around The Dinner Party.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · PreK-12 · Fee; per-student school rate
The largest Gothic cathedral in the world, unfinished on purpose, with a sixty-minute programme and a spiral stair climb for older groups.
Counts toward New York's required social studies, music, and visual arts.
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Center for Brooklyn History
1.5 hrs
Brooklyn · Grades 4-12 · Free
Brooklyn's own archive in a landmarked 1881 building, free to walk into. On-site school programming is currently virtual, so treat this as a self-guided visit.
Counts toward New York's required english, social studies, and library skills.
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Manhattan · All grades · No entry fee; ferry ticket required
The arrival halls restored to 1918, with the passenger records searchable on site and the Wall of Honor outside.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Manhattan · All grades · Free
Where Washington took the oath and the first Congress sat, rebuilt in 1842 as a Greek Revival customs house. Tours weekdays at 11 and 1.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Fraunces Tavern Museum
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · Grades 4-7 · Fee; flat rate per class
The room where Washington said goodbye to his officers, above a tavern still serving. School programmes run before the museum opens.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Manhattan · All grades · Free
The largest mausoleum in North America, with ranger programmes on Grant's life told through the building itself.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Manhattan · All grades · Free
Hamilton's only house, moved twice and restored to 1802. A cap of fifteen students makes it a small-group trip by design.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Intrepid Museum
1 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; one free chaperone per ten students
An aircraft carrier at Pier 86 with the space shuttle Enterprise and a Cold War submarine alongside. Programmes run sixty minutes and you can stay on after.
Counts toward New York's required science and social studies.
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Manhattan · All ages · Fee; much of the kids and family programming is free or choose-what-you-pay
Public Kids and Family performances across the campus. There is no school-group booking path here, so treat it as a family visit rather than a booked trip.
Counts toward New York's required music.
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Manhattan · PreK-12 · Fee; Title I rate
An 1887 synagogue restored after decades of decay, with a rose window by Kiki Smith. The first floor gallery is closed for renovation.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Museum of Arts and Design
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; free for NYC Title I schools
Craft and design treated as art, with a ninety-minute studio programme that is making rather than looking.
Counts toward New York's required visual arts.
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Manhattan · Grades 4-12 · Fee; free for New York New Jersey and Connecticut students through grade 12
A living memorial to the Holocaust at the tip of Manhattan, with student tours of the core exhibition booked a month ahead.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Museum of the City of New York
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; free for schools in three East Harlem zip codes
The city itself as the subject, from Lenapehoking to the present, with a film that compresses four hundred years into twenty-five minutes.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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National Museum of Mathematics
2.5 hrs
Manhattan · PreK-12 · Fee; group packages
Mathematics as something to ride, pedal and walk through, including the square-wheeled tricycle. Now at 635 Sixth Avenue.
Counts toward New York's required math.
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Manhattan · All grades · Free
The Smithsonian's New York branch in the old Custom House, with the imagiNATIONS Activity Center for hands-on work.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · Grades 3-12 · Fee; field trips free for New York New Jersey and Connecticut schools
The footprints of the towers above, and below them the slurry wall and the survivors' stairs. Heavy going for younger children.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Bronx · PreK-8 · Fee; self-guided grounds trips free for New York State programmes
Two hundred and fifty acres including fifty of old-growth forest, with a Victorian glasshouse and a children's adventure garden.
Counts toward New York's required science.
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New York Hall of Science
1.5 hrs
Queens · PreK-12 · Fee; NYC school rate
Six hundred hands-on exhibits in the 1964 World's Fair pavilion, with a design lab and a rocket park outside.
Counts toward New York's required math and science.
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New York Transit Museum
1 hrs
Brooklyn · PreK-12 · Fee; priced per class
A decommissioned 1936 subway station holding a century of rolling stock on its own platform, which you board.
Counts toward New York's required science and social studies.
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Queens Museum
2 hrs
Queens · PreK-12 · Fee; flat rate per group
The Panorama of the City of New York, a model of all five boroughs built for the 1964 World's Fair and still corrected as buildings change.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; gallery tours free for New York City public schools
The building is the first exhibit. One continuous ramp, and a one-hour tour that uses the spiral as the argument.
Counts toward New York's required visual arts.
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South Street Seaport Museum
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee
The port as it worked, with the 1885 Wavertree and the lightship Ambrose alongside and a working print shop indoors.
Counts toward New York's required science and social studies.
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Staten Island Children's Museum
1.5 hrs
Staten Island · PreK-Grade 5 · Fee
Twelve indoor and outdoor exhibits on the Snug Harbor grounds, with ninety-minute art workshops for booked groups.
Counts toward New York's required science, health, and visual arts.
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Staten Island Museum
1 hrs
Staten Island · PreK-12 · Fee; flat rate per class
A general museum in the old Snug Harbor sailors' retreat, holding natural science, art and local history in one collection.
Counts toward New York's required science, social studies, and visual arts.
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Manhattan · All grades · No entry fee; ferry ticket required
Liberty Island, the pedestal museum and the original 1886 torch, with the crown booked months ahead and separately.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Tenement Museum
1 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; Title I rate
Restored apartments at 97 and 103 Orchard Street, shown one family at a time, so the history arrives at the scale of a room.
Counts toward New York's required english and social studies.
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The Jewish Museum
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · PreK-12 · Fee; free general admission on Saturdays
Ceremonial objects and modern art in a Fifth Avenue mansion, with tours pairing a gallery hour and studio work for younger groups.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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The Met Cloisters
2 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; waived for schools inside New York City
Medieval cloisters rebuilt stone by stone above the Hudson, with the unicorn tapestries and a garden planted from the manuscripts.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; waived for schools inside New York City
Five thousand years arranged by culture rather than date, so a single visit can be one wing and still be a full morning.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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The Morgan Library and Museum
1.5 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; free Friday evenings
Pierpont Morgan's study and library kept as rooms rather than galleries, holding Gutenberg Bibles and literary manuscripts. School visits are guided only.
Counts toward New York's required english, visual arts, and library skills.
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The Museum of Modern Art
2.5 hrs
Manhattan · K-12 · Fee; free for students of NYC Title I schools
A sixty-minute guided tour plus a drop-in making activity, in the collection that decided what modern art means.
Counts toward New York's required social studies and visual arts.
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Manhattan · Grade 3 and up · Free
A reconstruction of the brownstone Roosevelt was born in, furnished with the family's own pieces. Tours at 11, 12, 2 and 3.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Manhattan · Age 5 and up · Fee
Guided tours of the General Assembly and Security Council chambers. Tours close during high-level meetings, so check before booking.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Van Cortlandt House Museum
1.5 hrs
Bronx · Grade 4 and up · Fee; free for Bronx public schools
The oldest house in the Bronx, a 1748 fieldstone Georgian Washington used twice, with a Delft tile workshop as an add-on.
Counts toward New York's required social studies.
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Wave Hill
1 hrs
Bronx · PreK-12 · Fee; free Thursdays but not for organised groups
Twenty-eight acres above the Hudson, with a conservatory and the view Toscanini and Twain both rented the house for.
Counts toward New York's required science and visual arts.
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Opening times, prices and homeschool dates change. Every listing links to the venue's own site — check there before you go. Somewhere missing, or a detail wrong? Tell us.