Rochester Field Trips Guide

Field Trip Categories In And Around Rochester

Museums, Tours, And Local Landmarks

The Strong National Museum of Play
The Strong National Museum of Play treats play as a serious subject with collections and exhibits spanning toys, games, video games, books and imaginative environments. The National Toy Hall of Fame and World Video Game Hall of Fame use familiar objects to explore design, culture and technological change, while younger children can climb, role-play and build in large interactive spaces. The museum's major expansion added new game-focused galleries and outdoor areas, making it a full-day destination for families. Preschoolers through middle school are the broadest audience; teens can engage deeply with game design, digital history and how commercial toys reflect social values. For school groups, one useful approach is to compare the rules and affordances of a board game, physical toy and video game and ask what each teaches players to do. The museum is collection-based as well as interactive, so it can support both free play and serious material-culture study.
Street Address: 1 Manhattan Square Dr, Rochester, NY 14607
Web Address: https://www.museumofplay.org/

George Eastman Museum
George Eastman Museum occupies the mansion and gardens of Kodak founder George Eastman and holds one of the world's major collections of photography and motion-picture technology. Eastman's 1905 Colonial Revival house preserves rooms, music spaces and gardens that reveal his wealth and interests, while galleries and archives trace photographic processes from early daguerreotypes to digital imaging. The museum's film holdings and conservation facilities connect Rochester's industrial history to global visual culture. Middle and high school students are the strongest fit, particularly for photography, chemistry, media and business history. A class can compare an early camera or glass plate with a smartphone and identify which technical problems became easier—and which questions about framing and truth remained. Younger visitors may enjoy the mansion and gardens more than dense photographic history. Tours add value because Eastman's personal story, Kodak's rise and the mechanics of early photography are spread across several parts of the site.
Street Address: 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607
Web Address: https://www.eastman.org/

Susan B. Anthony Museum & House
The Susan B. Anthony Museum & House preserves the Rochester home where Anthony lived for forty years and where she was arrested in 1872 after voting illegally under laws that excluded women. The brick house served as both a family residence and a working headquarters for suffrage organizing, with rooms connected to meetings, correspondence and national campaigns. Anthony died there in 1906, fourteen years before ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. Upper elementary through high school groups can use the house to move beyond a single heroic biography and examine networks of reformers, newspapers, petitions and legal challenges. Older students should also confront the racial tensions and exclusions within the broader suffrage movement. Because historic houses have small rooms and limited capacity, school visits need advance reservations. Pairing the site with Frederick Douglass history in Rochester makes a particularly strong unit on abolition, citizenship and voting rights.
Street Address: 17 Madison St, Rochester, NY 14608
Web Address: https://susanb.org/

Science, STEM, And Discovery

Rochester Museum & Science Center
Rochester Museum & Science Center combines regional history, natural science and hands-on STEM in a city shaped by optics and imaging. The Strasenburgh Planetarium presents astronomy programs, while museum galleries cover electricity, ecology, local Indigenous history and Rochester's industrial development. The institution's Haudenosaunee interpretation is especially important in a region within the homelands of the Seneca and other Haudenosaunee nations. Elementary students can move between live demonstrations and natural-history displays; older groups can connect science to Rochester's legacy in photography, optics and technology. The museum was founded in 1912 and has evolved from a traditional municipal museum into a science center with active education programs. For classes, selecting one regional question—how the Genesee River powered industry, how light is manipulated, or how Haudenosaunee communities adapted and persisted—creates a stronger visit than treating every gallery as unrelated.
Street Address: 657 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607
Web Address: https://rmsc.org/

Gardens, Parks, And Outdoor Learning

Highland Park
Highland Park is a Frederick Law Olmsted-designed landscape best known for its lilac collection and the annual Rochester Lilac Festival. Horticulturist John Dunbar helped develop the park's extensive collection, which now includes hundreds of lilac varieties that bloom in spring alongside magnolias, azaleas and other flowering trees and shrubs. The park also contains the Lamberton Conservatory, where tropical plants and seasonal displays provide a climate contrast with outdoor Rochester. Elementary students can compare flower structure, scent and pollinators; older groups can study cultivar selection, phenology and how an Olmsted landscape guides movement and views. A school trip is most distinctive during lilac season, but the park works year-round for tree identification and design study. Teachers should use the changing bloom calendar as data: students can record what is flowering and connect it to temperature and seasonal timing rather than expecting a fixed display.
Street Address: 180 Reservoir Ave, Rochester, NY 14620
Web Address: https://www.monroecounty.gov/parks-highland

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