School Experiences at RMSC
Embark on a journey of discovery with your students at the RMSC Museum, Strasenburgh Planetarium, and Cumming Nature Center. Find the program to match your curriculum needs using the search tool below or call us at 585.697.1942 and we'll help you identify the best program fo your class.
Educator Program Search
Explore school programs using our Program Search below. This tool is designed to help you find the RMSC experience that best fits your needs. As always, we're here to help. Give us a call at 585.697.1942 and we will answer any questions you have.
How to navigate our Educator Search Tool:
- When you open this page, you'll see all of the field trips we offer at the RMSC.
- You can select the grade level, program type, subject, and location filters to narrow down your search.
- Click on program titles that interest you to see more details, such as date availability.
NEW! Dinosaurs
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades PreK-2 | Take your experience to the next level with this hands-on companion program for our show-stopping Expedition Dinosaur exhibit!
NEW! Black Holes Revealed
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades 9-16 | Discover the mysteries of Black Holes through one of our most popular shows.
Rocks, Fossils and More
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades 1-5 | Explore fossils from the RMSC teaching collection. Sort rocks into three groups and learn about the minerals that make up rocks.
Introduction to Natural Communities
Cumming Nature Center Experiences, Virtual Experiences
Grades 2-5 | Explore the woods to discover how all living things are connected through food chains and the relationships between consumers, producers and decomposers.
Be an H2O Hero: How You Can Protect Your Watershed
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
Grades K-12 | We all live in a watershed... but, what’s a watershed?
Ecological Explorations
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
Grades 5-8 | Collect data from field, forest and pond communities to gain insight into communities, succession, food webs, and population dynamics.
Field Journal Journey
Cumming Nature Center Experiences, RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
Grades 4-12 | Explore the complexity and biodiversity of the natural world through observation and data collection using field journals.
Lift It, Launch It, Let it Go: Siege Machine Challenge
Engineering Design Lab
Grades 2-6 | Experiment with different projectiles, arm lengths and other variables to build and launch with a siege machine.
Nature Awareness
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
PreK-2 | Discover the beauty and complexity of the natural world through activities that engage all the senses.
Water Monitors
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
Grades 5-10 | This field study examines the features of clean water. Students will collect usable data on a Cumming Nature Center creek by collecting benthic macroinverebrates, performing chemical tests, measuring physical characteristics of one of the healthiest creeks in the region.
Simple Machines & Fantastic Forces
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades K-4 | Explore simple machines while experimenting with pulley systems and ramps. Learn about friction, gravity and inertia while investigating the forces of motion.
Mountain Rescue: Vehicle Challenge
Engineering Design Lab
Grades 2-6 | Put your engineering skills to the test as you create a vehicle to deliver life-saving supplies to a remote mountain village.
Sun, Moon and Stars
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades K-2 | Observe the Sun’s path through the sky from east to west. After sunset, find key constellations of the season by looking for distinctive features such as Orion’s Belt. Travel to the moon, returning just in time for sunrise.
Focus on Native Frogs
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
Grades 3-5 | This is a fun and dirty adventure that explores the amazing adaptations, lifecycle, and habit of the native frogs in our region.
RMSC DELIVERS: Rocks and Minerals
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site
Grades 3-7 | This outreach gives the student a hands-on understanding of geology.
What’s the Matter? (Solids, Liquids, and Gases)
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades PreK-2 | Explore the states of matter by comparing and contrasting solids, liquids and gases. Do hands-on experiments about liquid density and chemical reaction. Learn about polymers and make slime to take home.
Frog Adaptations
Inquiry Room Investigation, Virtual Experiences
Grades 3-4 | Discover the ingenious adaptations of live frogs and why they’re important.
RMSC DELIVERS: Light and Color
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
PreK-12 | Explore how and why we see colors in this fun, interactive show. Experiment with color mixing and learn about the different kinds of primary colors.
RMSC DELIVERS: Bats
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site
PreK-2 | This fun and interactive program will help your students to understand bats, and the important part they play in our ecosystem.
Solar System Science
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades 3-8 | Surrounded by the best images from recent space missions such as the New Horizons Pluto flyby projected at giant scale, students encounter the majesty, mystery and wonder of our solar system.
RMSC DELIVERS: Dinosaurs
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site
PreK-2 | This very interactive program expands the students’ imagination as they learn about and “create” a fossil. Students become “paleontologists” in a mock “dig”, and then role play as dinosaurs to explore how they move, eat, and defend themselves.
Winter Ecology
Cumming Nature Center Experiences, Virtual Experiences
Grades 5-12 | Examine how plants and animals adapt to winter.
RMSC DELIVERS: Field Journaling
Interactive Show/Assembly at Your School
Grades 4-9 | Discover the natural history of field journaling and what value a field journal can have for individuals and citizen science.
Tour of the Solar System
Science on a Sphere
Grades PreK-2 | Explore beautiful cutting-edge images of our solar system as you travel through space and learn the properties of each planet.
RMSC DELIVERS: Insects
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site
Grades K-2 | This fun, interactive program will get your class buzzing about insects. Students will take on the role of dragonflies, bees, crickets, and other insects, as they learn about insect anatomy, eating habits, and how they communicate.
Scale of the Universe
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades 9-12 | Expanding our view by powers of ten, we survey the universe from human scale to the limit of the observable universe, 100 to 1026 meters. Visualizations based on real NASA data.
Roving Robots
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades 1-5 | Discover how robots are programmed to perform tasks. Program a robot to complete a mission in space. Build a robot to communicate to extraterrestrial life!
Animal Defenses
Cumming Nature Center Experiences, RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
Grades 1-4 | This adventure explores the unique defense mechanisms that our local animals use to protect and defend themselves.
Live Science: Electricity Theater
Demonstration (Live Science)
Grades 1-12 | Two six foot tall Tesla Coils throwing 8 foot arcs of plasma (lightning) and the arcs actually play music. Our Faraday Cage can make the day of many in attendance electrifying!
Plastic Lakes: A little Litter Goes a Long Way
Science on a Sphere
Grades 6-8 | Plastic pollution has been widely studied in the ocean, however scientists have only recently started to study this problem in the Great Lakes.
Our Changing Earth
Science on a Sphere
Grades 6-12 | Take a closer look at how scientists determine the health of our planet.
Beaver Ecology
Cumming Nature Center Experiences, RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
Grades 3-7 | Discover adaptations, natural and cultural history of beavers.
Live Science: Solids, Liquids & Gases
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences, Demonstration (Live Science)
Grades 2-12 | Our coolest demonstrations, literally! This program explores temperature's effect on solids, liquids and gasses using liquid nitrogen.
RMSC DELIVERS: Energy
RMSC Delivers: Experiences at Your Site , Virtual Experiences
Grades 1-12 | The question is: “What is energy?” Demonstrators guide students in exploring these different forms of energy, how they connect, and how they are used.
Rotation and Revolution
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades 3-6 | Take a virtual trip from Earth’s surface into the solar system to see vividly how rotation and revolution produce the cyclical sky changes we see.
I See the Sky
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
PreK-K | Young children learn about day and night, the Sun and moon, bright and faint stars, constellations and meteors.
Climate and Our Changing Forest
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
Grade 5-12 | Explore how a changing climate affects flora and fauna, and collect data valuable to citizen science projects.
Light Up the Martian City: Alternative Energy Challenge
Engineering Design Lab, Virtual Experiences
Grades 2-8 | Become part of an elite team of astronauts as you construct an energy grid for the first human settlement on Mars.
Earthskills
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
PreK-5 | Students will discover how to tune in to nature through games and activities involving stealth and observation while practicing survival skills like shelter, fire building, woodscraft and more.
Erie Canal Simple Machine Challenge
Engineering Design Lab
Grades 4-8 | Simple Machines to the rescue! It's time to clear the path to make way for the Erie Canal, but we need your team to build a “stump puller.”
Naturalist in the Zoom! Custom Programs
Virtual Experiences
Grades Pre-K-12 | What are your students curious about in the natural world? What seasonal events, animal activities, bug perplexities, strange phenomena or wild finds might stump the Naturalist?
Solar System Science - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 3-8 | Surrounded by the best images from recent space missions such as the New Horizons Pluto flyby projected at giant scale, students encounter the majesty, mystery and wonder of our solar system.
Ticks! - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 3-7 | Ticks are amazingly adapted! Take a microscopic look at local tick species to learn more about them.
Insects - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades K-3 | Explore the incredible world of insects and the important roles they play in our ecosystem.
Climate and Changing Ecosystems - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 5-10 | Explore how changing weather patterns over time create climate, and the affects of changing climates on ecosystems past, present, and future.
Field Journaling - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 4-9 | Discover the natural history of field journaling and what value a field journal can have for individuals and citizen science.
What Tells Us That There Was a Big Bang? - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 9-12 | Review the three pillars of evidence that our universe is emerging from a Big Bang.
Day and Night On Our Planet - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades K-2 | Discover how the Earth and our view of outer space changes throughout the day and night.
Gravity, Scale, and Motion - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 7-12 | See how gravity influences the structure and motions of solar systems and galaxies.
How To Predict Eclipses - Virtual
Virtual Experiences
Grades 9-12 | We review the sun and moon motions needed to produce a solar eclipse. Then we discover how to predict when those conditions will recur.
Holiday Laser
Planetarium Laser Show
Grades K-8 | A holiday classic returns, with popular songs by Mariah Carey, Elvis Presley, Mahalia Jackson, Andy Williams, Mannheim Steamroller and others, choreographed to dancing laser light effects.
Ticks Up Close (NEW)
Cumming Nature Center Experiences
Grades 3-8 | Students will use microscopes to observe local tick species, learn how the most common tick species on the East Coast spread Lyme disease, and discuss the many ecosystem and climate factors that control tick populations.
Journey of Sound
Inquiry Room Investigation, Virtual Experiences
Grades PreK-4 | Explore how sound travels by experimenting with tuning forks, a spouting bowl, and instruments. Investigate of sound vibrations by creating a croaking frog!
Stories in Stone
Guided Exhibit Workshops
Grades 2-9 | Get hands on with rocks, minerals and fossil and discover the Earth Systems that shaped our local geology.
Animal Adaptations
Guided Exhibit Workshops, Virtual Experiences
Grades PreK-4 | Beavers, bears and birds, oh my! Structure follows function as students explore the adaptations that abound in the animal kingdom!
Predicting Weather
Science on a Sphere
Grades 3-8 | Discover the complex interactions and movement of air masses on our 5 ft. interactive globe.
Plates in Motion
Science on a Sphere
Grades 4-8 | Examine earthquakes, volcanoes and seafloor structures to evaluate the theory of past plate motions.
Inquiry Room Exploration
Inquiry Room Investigation
PreK | Explore science in a less structured setting as you learn and play in the unique Carlson Inquiry Room. Meet our live animals and investigate magnetism. Learn about states of matter as you experiment with vinegar and baking soda and make your own slime to take home.
Stormy Science
Inquiry Room Investigation, Virtual Experiences
Grades K-3 | Button up your raincoats and get ready to chase some storms!
Insect Investigations
Inquiry Room Investigation, Virtual Experiences
Grades K-3 | Explore the wonder of butterfly metamorphosis. Learn how insects communicate and meet the live critters that make their home in the RMSC Carlson Inquiry Room.
Magnet Exploration
Inquiry Room Investigation
Grades PreK-3 | Learn about magnetic fields and experiment with materials that are magnetic. Explore attraction and repulsion. Make magnets float.
AdventureZone
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Students explore the forces that have shaped Rochester in this exhibit that engages the mind and body.
Self Guided Nature Walk
Self-Guided Cumming Nature Center Experience
PreK - 12 | Embark on a self-guided nature walk at Cumming Nature Center!
Sound Bites
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Sounds are a part of our everyday lives and help us to make sense of the world around us. Experience how sound comes from vibrations – waves of energy that push tiny molecules against one another in pulses.
Expedition Earth
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Travel back into deep time! Discover how earthquakes and volcanoes have helped change the land and seas, resulting in adaptation or extinction.
Discover Our Weather
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Where do clouds come from? What is a "low pressure" system, and why does it sometimes mean a rainy day? What causes lightning? Experiment with the forces behind our changeable weather. Create a forecast to present on camera in the Weather Studio.
Nano
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Imagine and discover a world you can't see! Hands-on components present the basics of nanoscience and engineering, introduce some real-world applications, and explore the societal and ethical implications of this new technology.
Green Infrastructure Showcase
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | Green infrastructure is a cost-effective, sustainable approach to reducing stormwater runoff pollution while delivering environmental, social, and economic benefits.
How Things Work
Permanent Exhibition
Explore the mechanisms behind everyday objects and machines. Concepts include simple and complex machines, sound, electricity and magnetism.
Please note that the location of this exhibit varies. When making your reservation, please confirm with an RMSC team member that it is currently available to view.
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Illumination: The World of Light & Optics
Permanent Exhibition
K-12 | Engage with more than 15 interactive stations that demonstrate exciting scientific concepts from reflection and refraction to radio waves to color temperature. Crank, spin, and illuminate to make light bend, sound emanate, and shadows dance.
Under Construction: Building Careers
Permanent Exhibition
PreK-12 | This exhibit showcases the green technology used in the Sustainability Institute Hall (home of the Golisano Institute for Sustainability) building at RIT– from start to finish. It also highlights the careers necessary to complete the project from start to finish.
KEVAPlanks
Permanent Exhibition
Grades K-12 | Exercise student's mathematical and creative-thinking muscles as they engineer structures of their own design using thousands of these amazingly balanced wooden KEVA planks.
National Parks Adventure
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades K-8 | Take the ultimate off-trail adventure into the nation’s awe-inspiring great outdoors and untamed wilderness.
The Sky Tonight
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
Grades 3-12 | Get a unique view of what's in the sky tonight
Planet Spectacular
Planetarium Digistar Presentation
PreK-3 | Get a unique view of what's in the sky tonight
