Exciting Boston Attractions

June 19, 2008 by Leave a Comment

Traveling to Boston? This city offers many exciting activities from historic sites to museums, and makes a great destination for a student trip. Walking the Freedom Trail and learning about the development of our nation’s history is something your group is sure to enjoy. When the tour is over, there is a still a lot to do and see in the city. These places may interest your group.

Start your trip off with a visit to one of Boston’s museums. The Museum of Fine Arts, one of the largest museums in America, houses a vast collection of Art from Asia, Europe and America, and also features many displays of textiles, sculptures, photographs and more. For a unique museum experience, visit the Museum of African American History. Students will have the opportunity to walk the Black Heritage Trail, where they will view an African Meeting House, the first school for African American Students, and several other historic houses. Various displays and exhibits feature information and timelines on slavery, desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement.

The Museum of Science is another museum option, and presents an abundance of activities that are sure to be exciting for any age group. Students can watch bees making honey in an imitation of their natural habitat, see a dinosaur fossil and learn about medical x-rays. Students will enjoy learning about constellations and planetary bodies in the museum’s planetarium, and the museum also has laser shows, a 3-D cinema, and an IMAX Theater that offer shows on everything from dinosaurs to black holes. Students will enjoy the interactive displays, and also learn more about math, science, outer space.

Another popular site is the New England Aquarium. In addition to thousands of fish, this museum offers penguins, sharks, octopuses’, and seals. Guests can view jellyfish swimming in a two-story tank, watch the penguins eat a meal, and even walk through an Amazon rain forest. Hands-on areas provide kids with the opportunity to pet hermit crabs, lobsters and sea stars, and even ask the museum staff their own questions about their new underwater friends. Animal shows take place daily, and your group can watch a seal training session, see a diver feed sharks and stingrays, and learn how coral reefs are formed. Guided tours are available for school groups upon request.

A trip to the zoo is sure to please even the pickiest travelers. Franklin Park Zoo is one of the oldest zoos in America, and visitors will have a blast viewing over 200 species including gorillas, giraffes and hippos. The Butterfly tent, complete with a waterfall and a garden, is a seasonal display featuring over 1,000 free flying butterflies. Children will want to discover the Children’s Zoo, where they can observe prairie dogs, ducks and more. The Franklin Park Zoo even offers several interactive classes and tours that are planned to teach children about animal behaviors. For an even better adventure, the zoo offers overnights where students can spend the night getting a behind-the-scenes look at the animals and their caretakers.

These are just a few of the popular places to consider visiting on your trip to Boston. Plan to spend a morning or even a whole day at one of these sites. School trips are an excellent way to give kids a chance to learn about many different subjects in a short amount of time, so plan to visit one of these exciting locations.

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Thinking Regional: Branson, Missouri

June 19, 2008 by Leave a Comment

I’m a midwest girl with one husband, three sons, and a recent job change. With all of that and the price of a certain essential automobile additive that will remain unnamed reaching a number that frightens us in our sleep, I’ve decided to take the advice given early last month on this blog and think regionally for my next vacation.

I plan to gush here all about the trip when I return. We plan to spend a couple of days in Silver Dollar City. I love that park. It’s like Disney World for Daniel Boone fans. Only so much more. (Maybe you don’t know who Daniel Boone is, but I guarantee you about one in five Missourians claim to be distantly related to him. He’s fairly big here.) My first roller coaster ride ever took place (barely) in Silver Dollar City when I was 5 years old. (I clutched my dad’s shirt the entire ride and screamed for Mom. You know I wanted back on the ride the minute it was over though). At the time, that was the only actual ride in the park. Not true anymore. And I can’t wait to discover the new ones and get a permanent imprint from my own child’s fingernails. I hear they also have a giant swing. I rode one of these once before. As I recall, getting to the top was the second scariest thing I’ve voluntarily signed up for in my life. The first scariest? Actually being at the top. I rode with my husband and his brother, who ended up in charge of the string-pulling that would plummet us back toward ground. I asked him later how he ever managed to pull that string. “I wanted DOWN,” he said. Ah.

So I don’t know if I’ll do the swing again. But listen, frankly you don’t go to Silver Dollar City for the thrill rides. You go for the culture. The deep, Ozark-mountain, I-can-carve-your-likeness-into-this-pine-log-right-before-your-eyes craftsmanship, and down home fiddling. You go for the one hour tour in the giant cave and the black paved streets that wind their way through the Missouri hills, opening your eyes to a world you might never have appreciated before.

The day after that we plan to turn into giant, human prunes at White Water, and the next maybe visit the Titanic Museum. My kids have only seen bits and pieces of the film – what with the adult themes and all, but I saw it three times in the theater. The second time as the crowd swarmed from the building in a giant teary mass, I felt like we were reenacting those horrible moments when the passengers knew they needed off the ship but that not all of them would survive. I look forward to walking on a beautiful replica of the grand staircase and seeing one of the life jackets with my very own eyes. It’s a tragic story in our human history. It evokes compassion, something I love to see growing in my children.

After that perhaps we’ll hit Silver Dollar city again. I hear there are giant water guns hidden in the trees in which you can deposit a quarter and soak the unsuspecting people on a neighboring ride. The lesson there of course will not be compassion. More like – how to make a stranger’s ride more fun – without getting caught. Yea, I think we’re going to enjoy this trip.

I’ll let you know how it goes.  Maybe you’ll want to check out one of our company’s Branson graduation trips for your next adventure.

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