Homeschool field trips in Philadelphia
Museums, gardens, historic sites and working mills across the Philadelphia metro, from Bucks and Chester counties to Camden and the Brandywine Valley.
42 places · Checked September 11, 2026
What a visit counts toward in Pennsylvania
Time spent here counts toward Pennsylvania's 900 required hours a year, or 990 from 7th grade. Each listing below names which of Pennsylvania's required subjects a visit supports, in the wording the statute uses.
Coming home from a field trip with nothing for the portfolio
Pennsylvania's portfolio is a contemporaneous log plus samples: reading materials by title, writings, worksheets and creative work. A museum day counts toward your hours the moment you log it, but it leaves your evaluator nothing to look at unless something comes back with you. Decide what that is before you go, whether it is the trail guide, a page the student wrote that evening, or the exhibit book you then log by title.
Check Pennsylvania's homeschool requirements before you count anything toward them.
42 of 42 places
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Adventure Aquarium
2.5 hrs
Camden · All grades · Fee
Hippos, a shark tunnel you walk through and a touch pool, on the Camden waterfront directly across from Penn's Landing.
Homeschool programme. Homeschool Week runs annually, with a discounted rate for families visiting without the usual 20-person group minimum. Booked through group sales.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Bartram's Garden
2 hrs
Philadelphia · PreK-12; monthly homeschool lessons ages 5-11 · Free
John Bartram's 1728 farm on the Schuylkill, the oldest surviving botanic garden in the country, with the house and the river frontage both open.
Homeschool programme. Homeschooler Days, second and third Wednesdays each month, ages 5 to 11 with caregivers. The same lesson runs both days and places are limited to 15 students.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Camden · PreK and up by programme · Fee
The most decorated battleship in the fleet, tied up across from Penn's Landing, with firepower, circuits and navigation each run as a separate ninety-minute programme.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Betsy Ross House
1 hrs
Philadelphia · All grades; field trip programmes grades 4-6 · Fee
A small courtyard house in Old City with an upholsterer's shop, presented with the evidence for and against the flag story rather than just the story.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history.
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New Hope · All grades · Fee
A hundred and thirty-four acres given over entirely to Pennsylvania's native plants, with guided tours capped at fifteen people so the group stays on the trail together.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Brandywine Museum of Art
1.5 hrs
Chadds Ford · PreK-12 · Fee
Three generations of Wyeths in a Civil War era grist mill, with the river running past the glass.
Homeschool programme. Homeschool groups can book the same guided tour themes offered to school groups, and multiple themes can be combined for a multi-age group.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and art.
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Newtown Square · Ages 4-15 · Fee
A working 18th-century farm run without anachronism, with heritage breeds, hearth cooking and crops worked the way the account books describe.
Homeschool programme. Homeschool Days, 9:30am to 12:30pm, designed for ages 4 to 15 with seasonal farm chores, candle dipping, hearth cooking and textiles. Pre-registration only, no day-of admission.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Wilmington · PreK-8 · Fee
Shells, dinosaurs and a Great Barrier Reef diorama, rebuilt in 2022 around hands-on galleries for the under-twelves.
Homeschool programme. A standing homeschool programme page with scheduled homeschool events and co-op bookings, plus a mailing list. Dates are announced rather than fixed, so check before planning around it.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Philadelphia · All grades; workshops middle school and up · Fee
The first penitentiary in the world, built to reform by solitude, now a stabilised ruin with a permanent exhibit on American incarceration rates.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and civics.
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Elmwood Park Zoo
2 hrs
Norristown · Homeschool workshops ages 6-12 · Fee
A small keeper-led zoo where the giraffe feeding and the jaguar habitat are both close enough to watch properly, rather than a day of walking.
Homeschool programme. Homeschool Workshops, 60 minutes, $17.95 per student, ages 6 to 12 in two age bands on separate monthly dates from September to April. Registration required and sessions sell out.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Fireman's Hall Museum
1 hrs
Philadelphia · All grades · Free; donations appreciated
An 1876 firehouse holding hand pumps, a fireboat wheelhouse and a working alarm telegraph. Group tours are arranged by phone rather than online.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and safety.
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Hagley Museum and Library
2.5 hrs
Wilmington · K-12 · Fee
The du Pont black powder works along the Brandywine, with the water turbines, the rolling mills and a machine shop still running under belt drive.
Homeschool programme. A standing invitation to homeschool families and academies to book any school programme, plus Engineering Endeavors, a four-week course for homeschool students in grades 5 and 6.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Free; Independence Hall tickets carry a small handling fee
Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and Congress Hall on one walkable block, with ranger programmes and a school reservation system behind them.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and civics.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; ship tours priced separately
The Delaware as a working river, with the cruiser Olympia and the submarine Becuna tied up outside and a boat shop building wooden hulls indoors.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science, geography, and history.
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James A. Michener Art Museum
1.5 hrs
Doylestown · PreK through university · Fee; free second Sundays
Pennsylvania Impressionists in a converted county jail, with the cell block left visible.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and art.
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Audubon · K-12 · Fee; free Sunday mornings and free trails
Audubon's first American home, with a full set of the double elephant folio and one hundred and seventy-five acres of trails he worked from.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and art.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; flat school group rate
A Germantown Quaker house that was a working Underground Railroad station, open Thursday to Saturday by appointment.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history.
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Longwood Gardens
3 hrs
Kennett Square · Ages 4-18 · Free for booked homeschool groups of 15 or more
Eleven hundred acres of du Pont's gardens, with a four-acre conservatory, a meadow and fountains that are themselves an engineering exhibit.
Homeschool programme. A standing K-12 homeschool programme: field trips are free for homeschool groups of 15 or more students aged 4 to 18, parents stay with their own children throughout, and the autumn window runs mid-September to early November on weekdays.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and art.
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Mercer Museum
2.5 hrs
Doylestown · PreK-Grade 8 · Fee
Henry Mercer's concrete castle, hung floor to ceiling with the hand tools of sixty pre-industrial trades, including a whale boat suspended in the central court.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Free
A free exhibit on what a central bank does, redesigned and reopened in 2026 around roughly four hundred objects. Groups of fifteen or more arrange entry in advance.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required math and civics.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; youth rate ages 3-17
Penn's 92-acre arboretum in Chestnut Hill, with a canopy walk, a restored Victorian fernery and a garden railway. Tours run mid-March to the end of November.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Philadelphia · Grades 4-12 · Fee; student rate with one free adult per ten
Washington's field tent is the centrepiece, shown at the end of a film rather than behind glass. The facilitated tour runs ninety minutes.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and civics.
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National Constitution Center
2.5 hrs
Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; student group rate from 15 people
A museum built around the document itself, with a signers' hall of life-size bronzes and a theatre piece that argues the thing rather than narrating it.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and civics.
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National Liberty Museum
1.5 hrs
Philadelphia · Grades 4-12 · Fee
Glass art used to carry a civics argument about liberty, with a ninety-minute visit the museum builds its groups around.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history, civics, and art.
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Newlin Grist Mill
2.5 hrs
Glen Mills · Preschool through high school · Fee; trails and grounds free
A 1704 mill that still grinds, on a hundred and sixty acres with the millrace, a trout stream and an archaeology programme working the site.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Penn Museum
3 hrs
Philadelphia · K-12 · Fee; free days
Egyptian, Middle Eastern and Mesoamerican collections from Penn's own excavations, including a sphinx of Ramses II.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required geography, history, and art.
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Philadelphia · PreK-12 · Fee
The oldest art museum and school in the country, in a Furness building that is itself the first thing a tour looks at.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and art.
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Peter Wentz Farmstead
2 hrs
Worcester · All grades · Fee
The Georgian farmhouse Washington used before and after Germantown, restored to its 1777 paint scheme, which is stranger than any reproduction would dare.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history.
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Philadelphia Museum of Art
2.5 hrs
Philadelphia · PreK-12 · Fee; pay-what-you-wish Friday evenings
One of the largest art museums in the country, with period rooms, armour and a long run of American painting alongside the European collections.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and art.
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Philadelphia Zoo
3 hrs
Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; student rate on weekdays in term time
The first zoo in the United States, on forty-two acres, with mesh trails overhead that let the big cats and primates cross above the paths.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Please Touch Museum
2.5 hrs
Philadelphia · PreK-Grade 5 · Fee; free community days
A hands-on children's museum in Memorial Hall with a restored 1908 carousel, built for the under-sevens rather than tolerating them.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required english, science, and art.
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Philadelphia · Grade 6 and up · Free
How chemistry got made, told through instruments, early plastics and the people who worked on them. An hour is what the museum itself suggests.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science and history.
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Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; group rates by phone
The first museum built by a major US city to collect and interpret African American history, opened for the Bicentennial. Tours run 45 to 60 minutes.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history.
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The Barnes Foundation
2 hrs
Philadelphia · PreK-12 · Fee
Albert Barnes hung post-impressionist paintings alongside ironwork and furniture in fixed ensembles, and the collection is still displayed exactly as he left it.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required art.
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The Franklin Institute
3.5 hrs
Philadelphia · All grades · Fee; group rate from 15 people
A giant walk-through heart, a planetarium and a Baldwin locomotive you can climb into, in a building that keeps Franklin's own memorial under the dome.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required math and science.
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The Philadelphia Orchestra
0.8 hrs
Philadelphia · Grades 3-5 school concerts; grades 2-12 across the slate · Fee
Forty-five minute school concerts in Marian Anderson Hall, with student open rehearsals for older groups.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required music.
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The Rosenbach
1.5 hrs
Philadelphia · Middle school and up · Fee
A townhouse library holding the manuscript of Ulysses and Maurice Sendak's working drawings, shown in small guided groups.
Homeschool programme. Their school-programs page welcomes homeschool groups alongside high school English classes, at the standard per-student programme rate.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required english and history.
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Philadelphia · PreK-12 · Fee; half day and full day rates
Three hundred and forty acres of woodland inside the city limits, with a wildlife clinic and programmes banded from preschool to grade 12.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Tyler Arboretum
1.5 hrs
Media · PreK-Grade 5 · Fee
Six hundred and fifty acres with champion trees, a butterfly house and tree houses built into the canopy. School programmes run Tuesday to Thursday mornings.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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King of Prussia · Grades 3-12 · Free
Three thousand five hundred acres of the encampment, with reconstructed huts, Washington's headquarters and a ten-mile loop you can walk or cycle.
Homeschool programme. No Homeschool Day in 2026 while the park runs its anniversary programming. A free self-guided homeschool activity pack is published in its place.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required geography, history, and civics.
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Wagner Free Institute of Science
1.5 hrs
Philadelphia · PreK-12 · Free; $5 suggested donation per student
A Victorian natural history museum left almost exactly as it was arranged in 1891, cases, labels and all, still giving free science lessons as its founder intended.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required science.
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Winterthur · PreK-12 · Free for booked school field trips in 2026-27
Henry Francis du Pont's house of one hundred and seventy-five period rooms, set in a thousand acres, with a three-mile garden walk around it.
Counts toward Pennsylvania's required history and art.
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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.