Chicago Park District groups visit the Nature Museum for free year-round!
Bring your CPD group for a self-guided tour to experience more than 30,000 square feet of exhibitions, 40+ living animals species, and thousands of preserved specimens all focusing on our region’s unique ecosystems.
In-person field trips to the Nature Museum are currently unavailable as a result of our building closure. Our educators are ready and available to bring field trip programming and more to your classroom virtually. Click here to get the conservation started.
Student and Chaperone Pricing
Chicago Park District groups receive free student field trip admission.
Adults, including chaperones and leaders, also receive free admission. Please consider keeping adult attendance close to a 1:5 adult:student ratio.
Enhance Your Visit
Add a Field Trip Workshop
Enhance your group’s Nature Museum experience by participating in one of our popular, hands-on workshops during your field trip. Choose from our 15 workshops created for Pre-K through High School groups that use unique museum resources to teach relevant science and nature content. All workshops are taught by Museum Educators and are correlated with the Next Generation Science Standards.
Themed Field Trips
Looking to focus your group visit? We offer you a choice of four free themes to attach to your group visit. These themes will provide your groups with a focus while traveling through our permanent, temporary and outdoor exhibits. Groups will be given a custom-themed tour card for their self-guided tour. Choices include Insects & More, Midwest Ecosystems, Conservation, and Collections & Specimens.
Adopt-A-Butterfly
Make your field trip visit unforgettable by releasing a butterfly for its very first flight. For $10 per class, each class will be able to adopt a butterfly that has just emerged from its chrysalis and is ready to be released into the Judy Istock Butterfly Haven!
Arrival and Check-in
When your bus arrives, it will pull into the turn-around directly in front of the Museum. One of our staff members will greet your bus and provide the Museum rules to your group, while the lead teacher from each school enters the Museum to check in and receive your group’s tour cards.
In order to ensure that our visitors have the opportunity to explore the Museum fully, school groups will be divided by class into lettered groups (A, B, C, etc.). We will provide one tour card to the leader of each lettered group. These custom tour cards provide an outline for your trip and also include specific times and locations for lunches and workshops. Click here for a sample tour card.
Your classes will then be led off the bus and organized into letter groups by class, each with their own tour card. Once organized, your group will be moved inside to drop off lunches and coats. If you have requested a lunch space, each lettered group’s lunch time and location will appear on their tour card. We ask that you bring lunches in small, recyclable brown paper bags. We will bring them to the lunch room at your assigned lunch time. Please do not call ahead for lunch times.
Once those have been dropped off, a staff member will escort you to your first exhibit or workshop, and your Museum exploration will begin!
Request a Field Trip
Reserve your space today! Click one of the buttons below to begin filling out the Field Trip Request Form. Please only submit one request per field trip. If you are planning multiple field trips – either on more than one day or a morning and afternoon visit – you must fill out a separate request for each. Before requesting a visit, please click here to review the Payment & Cancellation Policies.
Please note: field trip registration is currently unavailable.
After you’ve submitted a request form, we will process your request within five business days. Once we’ve booked your field trip, we will send you a confirmation packet via email. Your field trip is not confirmed until you’ve received this email. After five days, if you have not received an email please email chicagoparkdistrict@naturemuseum.org to check on the status of your request.
Anything Else?
Please visit our Field Trip FAQs for answers to common questions. If you need further assistance, please email chicagoparkdistrict@naturemuseum.org.
