Student & Youth Field Trips
The State Historical Museum of Iowa allows you the freedom of a self-guided visit with supplemental exhibit material provided to encourage young visitors to understand more about Iowa history.
Field trips guided by the museum are available twice per year through the History Alive program.
Youth group trips are entirely facilitated by adult group leaders. This experience works best if the adult leader has created small groups, assigned at least one chaperone to each group, prepared and shared the agenda with the group and discussed museum behavior with children and chaperones prior to arrival at the museum.
Use the State Historical Museum of Iowa’s Field Trip Guide for more information regarding policies, parking/bus information and educational materials for group visits with children and/or teens ages 3-18.
Visit Length
The aged-based visit length is used to ensure young visitors remain engaged during the entirely of the visit. Use this guide to determine the length of your visit. If your group has multiple age ranges, select the age of the youngest attendees to determine your visit length.
| Age | Grade | Visit Length |
| Ages 3-8 | Preschool-2nd Grade | 60 minutes |
| Ages 9-14 | 3rd-8th Grade | 90 minutes |
| Ages 15-18 | 9th-12th Grade | 90-120 minutes (120 minutes works best with small, topic-focused groups) |
You may request for your group to have lunch at the museum. Lunch times are 30 minutes and are included in the total visit length. For example, if your group of 10 year olds (90 minutes total) requests to each lunch at the museum, you would have a 60 minutes of museum time with 30 minutes for lunch, totalling 90 minutes.
Group Size
Young visitors benefit from smaller groups where they can engage and learn without the distractions and noise from other large groups.
- 90 youth attendees maximum (excluding leaders and chaperones)
Ask us how to split your larger group between other cultural organizations such as the State of Iowa Capitol.
Chaperones
Adult chaperones are responsible for supervising young visitors at all times while at the museum. Attentive chaperones are vital to the success of your visits and it’s the chaperone’s responsibility to demonstrate, encourage and enforce good behavior within the group.
- One chaperone is required for every 8-10 youth
- Chaperones are required for every visiting group with visitors 18 years old or younger.
Visit Registration
After reading the State Historical Museum of Iowa’s Field Trip Guide, please register your group visit at least two weeks in advance via the online registration form. All visit requests must be submitted online.
All visit requests will be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis. Visits are not considered booked until you receive a confirmation email from a museum team member. Also, the State Historical Museum of Iowa is unable to guarantee the first date and time request will be available for visiting groups, especially during the spring months. If the date and time of the requested visit are already booked, a museum team member will contact you via email to work toward finding a different available date and time.
