Greater Springfield
Field Trips

Amelia Park Children’s Museum is the Westfield area’s best destination for hands-on exhibits and fun learning where children can build, pretend they are a doctor or bank teller, find dinosaur bones and have fun while moving and exercising. 

Beneski Museum of Natural History has fossils and minerals from around the globe, including dinosaur footprints, a petrified tree and meteorite specimens, which are available to touch. 

The Eric Carle Museum is the first institution of its kind, with its special focus on picture book art and seeks to foster connections between visual and verbal literacy. It has several running exhibits that focus on specific picture books and their authors.

The Hitchcock Center connects its visitors to the natural world, with programs particularly focused on children who currently live in a world of environmental challenges.

The Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts has a collection of American, Asian, and European paintings, prints, watercolors and sculpture.

At the Springfield Science Museum, visitors are wowed by planetarium shows, exhibits of space exploration, ancient fossils and even a live animal center. The museum is also home to the oldest operating planetarium in the United States. 

The Botanic Garden of Smith College includes thousands of plants, including those grown under glass in the Lyman Conservatory and outdoors in the campus arboretum, and various specialty gardens around the campus.