When you can’t get away, your kids still can by taking a virtual field trip to a museum, farm, zoo, or another fun location. We compiled our list of favorites to help you keep your kids engaged and entertained. Some of these are virtual tours in so much you can actively decide where to go and some are video walkthroughs, but all give you a good experience of the location.
Best Cave Virtual Tour: Son Doong Cave
Son Doong is the world’s largest natural cave. Located in Vietnam, it features a subterranean river and the largest cross-section of any cave worldwide. National Geographic’s virtual tour lets you explore the cave with full 360-degree views and immersive sounds. You can even zoom in one area to check out the campers in their tents. Son Doong is beautiful and worth a virtual visit.
Son Doong is beautiful.
The virtual tour includes lots of information.
Zoom into areas for a more detailed look.
No supplemental online activities.
Best National Park Virtual Tour: Yellowstone
Yellowstone offers seven virtual tours appropriate for older elementary and middle school ages. There’s a lot of written information along with the images, and the tours aren’t in video. However, the information is fascinating, and the photos are stunning.
Offers multiple tours.
Lots of historical information.
Amazing images.
No video tours.
Lots of written information that can turn off some kids.
From learning about old Fort Yellowstone to discovering park anomalies like Mud Volcano, these tours are a great way for kids to discover unique facts about America.
Best Tour of the White House: Google Arts & Culture’s The White House
Every President since John Adams has occupied the White House and now your children can visit it, too. Google Arts & Culture offers four museum views (three tours of The White House and one of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) plus a look at more than 140 paintings that grace (or have graced) the walls of the country’s most famous abode. The 360-degree images let kids explore to their heart’s desire.
Stunning 360-degree images.
See inside and outside the White House.
Offers views of 140 paintings.
Once inside a tour, it’s hard to know what you’re looking at.
No search functions.
Best Tour of Space: NASA
This might be cheating a bit because it’s really a collection of videos, but, oh boy, what a collection to tour! The Galleries open up an array of videos covering space topics from testing a parachute for Mars to moving water in space. Each video is a mini virtual tour that will awe kids and encourage interest in science and space.
The volume of space videos.
The approachable aspect of the videos.
So much more to see on the site.
It’s not easily searchable unless you know what you’re looking for.
Best Natural History Tour: Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
This iconic museum is dedicated to understanding the natural world and humanity’s place in it. There’s so much to see it can’t possibly be listed here. However, the museum offers an online tour of most of its exhibits. Split this tour up into multiple lessons, so kids don’t get overwhelmed.
So many exhibits to see!
Easy, clickable maps.
Quick and easy to navigate.
It’s not always easy to read the signs in the exhibits.
Skip the ground floor and go straight to the first or second floors.
Best Aquarium Virtual Tour: National Aquarium
Easy to find exhibits.
Fun to explore using the 360-degree options.
Some scenes spin quickly, which can frustrate young learners.
Best Tours of the World: AirPano
AirPano has a variety of tours in China, Portugal, Switzerland, and more countries. Children can visit the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge in China, an underwater cave in Indonesia, ski resorts in France, and more destinations around the globe.
Bright, well-produced videos and images.
Offers tours of numerous countries.
Includes video and still frame-images.
What’s not to like?
What makes this site so good is that it offers narrations of several tours, provides closeups through interactive actions, and includes short chunks of written information that’s easy for kids of most ages to read. The tours are also fairly short, which makes these tours great for younger kids, but older kids will still enjoy the trip.
Best Virtual Tour for Car Lovers: Lane Motor Museum
Scroll to the bottom of the link to watch a fun virtual tour of one of the most unique car museums in the world. Lane Motor Museum is home to an oddball collection of vehicles dating from the 1920s up to modern times.
Totally unique tour.
An inside look that allows for deep diving into collections.
There’s no way to tell what a specific vehicle is unless you know cars.
Your child will love seeing amphibious vehicles, microcars, prototypes, and more. The tour is easy to click through and offers six angles to entertain viewers.
Best Tours of Nature: Nature Works Everywhere
Explore nature around the world with Nature Works Everywhere’s virtual tours. Visit the coral reefs of Palau, the deserts and grasslands of Africa, a rainforest (from a canoe’s viewpoint), a renewable energy plant, and more.
Tours are narrated and easy to follow.
Provides student handouts, vocabulary, and discussion questions.
We wish there was a larger library of tours!
The tours are narrated and give great, quick facts to help kids learn in simple, straightforward ways. All tours are appropriate for grades 3 through 12 but are marked with notes about the grades most likely to enjoy the tour.
Best Historical Tour: Ellis Island
Ellis Island is a key piece of American history. This virtual tour offers lots of anecdotes and features actual guides from Ellis Island telling stories. Plus, it includes lots of pictures and views of the island.
A clear explanation of Ellis Island, how it worked, and why it was needed.
Includes children asking questions of tour guides.
The images in much of the tour are small in order to focus on the tour guides.
It’s more appropriate for fourth grade and up, mainly due to the litany of facts and complexity of the information provided.
Best Slime-Based Virtual Tour: Slime in Space
What happens to Nickelodeon’s iconic slime when it’s in space? That’s the concept behind the Slime in Space virtual field trip. Featuring real astronauts and Nickelodeon celebrities, the 15-minute video shows kids how slime and water react in a microgravity environment 250 miles above the Earth. Along the way, it answers burning questions like, “Is slime a solid or a liquid?” and “Can you slime a person in space?” (The answer is: yes, very slowly.)
It’s playful and educational.
Good production values.
Fun experiments.
It’s a video, not an interactive virtual tour.
Best Virtual Zoo Tour: San Diego Zoo
The San Diego Zoo is home to more than 3,500 animals of more than 650 species and subspecies. It’s widely considered one of the best zoos in the world. But, if you can’t make it to California, it has a robust virtual experience online.
Live cams of the animals.
A variety of educational videos.
Fun games and activities.
Fixed camera angles mean you’re not always guaranteed to see the animals.
You can peek in on the animals through live cams. There’s also a variety of videos that teach kids about vultures or show them how to draw a tiger, for example. There are also zoo-related games and activities kids can do at home.
Best General Farm Tour: FarmFood 360
FarmFood 360 gives an inside look at the activities of a Canadian farm. Kids see 360-degree views of the farm as they learn about milk and cheese production, sheep farming, egg processing, and more.
360-degree views of the farm.
Offers a free app for Android and iOS.
It can be hard to see things on a mobile device.
There’s an app available for Android and iOS devices, and it’s compatible with some virtual reality headsets.
Best Virtual Planetarium: Stellarium
Stellarium Web is an online planetarium created by two brothers. Offering an accurate and realistic view of the night sky, it lets you pan around and spot stars, satellites, and other celestial bodies.
Realistic night sky simulation.
Mobile apps are available.
Includes a telescope control module for experienced astronomers.
Can be difficult to navigate.
The mobile apps aren’t free, but the money supports the project.
It offers mobile apps for Android and iOS that aren’t free. The money goes toward paying server and development costs for the two-person project.
Best Art-Centric Virtual Tour: The Met
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is home to over 5,000 years of art from around the world. You can see some of it from the comfort of your home. Take a virtual stroll through part of the museum using Google Street View. There are also numerous online exhibits on topics like Coco Chanel, Vermeer, Catholic allegory in art, and more.
A glimpse at some of the greatest works of art created.
Online exhibits on various topics.
There’s only one view of the museum currently available.
Best Living-History Virtual Tour: Colonial Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum in Virginia that offers a glimpse at what life was like in the 18th century. Its virtual tour is highly interactive and includes videos, informational signs, and 3D models you can rotate.
Next best thing to being there.
The virtual scavenger hunt.
The virtual tours are highly interactive.
Virtual tour models can load slowly.
Condensation or inclement weather can obstruct the webcam views.
With its various webcams, you can see the armory, courthouse, merchants square, and more. Colonial Williamsburg’s website also offers a virtual scavenger hunt your kids can participate in as they tour the area.
Best European Museum Virtual Tour: The Louvre
Sure, we’d love to jet off to France and tour its fabulous museums personally. But if that’s not an option, the Louvre has several virtual tours available on its website. The offerings include exhibitions on the body in movement, founding myths, Egyptian antiquities, and more.
It’s the Louvre.
The website offers a list of online family-friendly activities.
The virtual tours include a map and an information button.
The website offers limited language options.
The Louvre also has a handy list of family-friendly online resources everyone can enjoy, including a Mona Lisa VR experience.
Best Factory Virtual Tour: M&M Factory Tour
The Food Network teamed up with candy maker Mars to give M&M fans a virtual tour of one of its factories. During the short YouTube video, viewers can pan around as a tour guide explains how unrefined chocolate is turned into the little candies we know and love.
Who doesn’t love chocolate?
360-degree views of the factory.
It’s short.
Best General Virtual Tour Resource: Discovery Education
Discovery Education offers a variety of virtual field trips for kids learning from home. The offerings change often but currently include an NFL experience, a doodling experience meant to encourage creativity, and a virtual field trip through the internet of things. You can watch the field trips live or catch the videos later on-demand.
An eclectic variety of virtual field trips.
Watch live or on demand.
Trips come with a companion guide packed with activities.
A schedule of when field trips go live would be nice.
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