Children in all grades at ACS experience supervised field trips, including more than 40 day trips to destinations including the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Technology Museum of Innovation, The Nutcracker, San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Chabot Space and Science Center and San Jose State University.

Children in grades 4-8 also participate in overnight excursions including Yosemite Science Camp, Malakoff Diggins, Walker Ranch, Catalina Environmental Learning Program on Catalina Island and a guided visit to Washington, D.C. All excursions are chaperoned by ACS faculty members.

Each of these trips have been carefully planned, developed, and refined over the years providing highly stimulating, memorable learning in a safe, supervised environment. The students take away invaluable lessons about their studies, their world and themselves. It is experiences such as these that reach the whole child and help them apply and connect what they have learned at ACS to the world beyond.

4th Grade: Malakoff Diggins

Malakoff Diggins offers fourth grade students an opportunity to bring their studies of California’s pioneer era and the Gold Rush to life. Under the supervision of park docents, they actually get to explore the site of California’s largest hydraulic mine. Students, volunteer parents and teachers take part in a three-day, two-night adventure that includes taking on the role of early Californians and learning through doing the jobs they would have done, wearing period costumes and actually living the life of a settler.

5th Grade: Science Camp

The fifth grade overnight science camp trip extends our science curriculum, focusing on botany, zoology, relationships and interdependence in nature. Students, chaperones and teachers are at camp near Point Reyes National Seashore for five days and four nights. Highlights of this week are the team building activities, solo night hike, the challenging trek to Walker Peak, tide pooling at Tomales Bay and the Barnyard Boogie (an ACS fifth grader’s first school dance).

6th Grade: Yosemite

The ACS Yosemite trip gives our sixth grade students hands-on life and earth science lessons unlike any they could get from a textbook or classroom lecture as they visit one of our nation’s natural treasures. The children and their teachers spend five days exploring Yosemite’s magnificent winter scenery, applying their science curriculum lessons in geology and wildlife topics, as well as implementing the sixth grade Character and Competence goals for developing leadership and social skills. Our campers appreciate the beautiful, quiet winter season in Yosemite National Park. Highlights include cross-country skiing, ice skating, hiking and cave exploration.

7th Grade: Catalina Environmental Leadership Program

The Catalina Environmental Leadership Program (CELP) camp allows our seventh grade students access to the pristine natural environment of Catalina Island. This living classroom offers lessons in biological sciences, environmental science and issues relating to ecosystem interdependency, resource management and conservation. In addition to their daily activities in the camp’s science lab, organic garden, and massive composting operation, students get to hike atop Catalina’s peaks, explore the shoreline in guided kayaking expeditions, experience team building and risk taking on the ropes course, and experience the island’s majestic kelp forests in day and night snorkel excursions led by the camp’s professional naturalists.

8th Grade: Washington, D.C.

After two years of studying U.S. history, a trip to our nation’s Capitol in the spring brings to life real the topics and concepts our 8th graders have learned. The Washington, D.C. tour immerses students in the extraordinary historical, political and cultural resources of our the Capitol. This eight-day trip is arranged through a professional school tour company and sometimes includes visits to Williamsburg, Boston, Mount Vernon and Philadelphia. Highlights of the trip include taking part in the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, visiting the Holocaust Museum in connection with reading the novel Night and touring the White House.