Remember how much fun field trips used to be? You and your friends skipping the day’s classes,… Remember how much fun field trips used to be? You and your friends skipping the day’s classes, permission slips in hand, and going to a museum for the sake of an activity that could be – believe it or not – both fun and educational. Now that you’re here, you’ll find that Pittsburgh has a wide variety of destinations for planning your own private field trips – no permission slips required.

Oakland is the perfect place to start, home to the Carnegie Museums of Natural History and Art. Don’t let the “Natural History” name fool you – this isn’t just some collection of ancient tree bark and igneous rocks. Your Pitt ID gets you free admission to dozens of exhibits.

You can take a trip through ancient Egypt and see mummies, a rustic canoe and a tomb fully stocked with burial treasures. Or you can visit the arctic, complete with polar bears and walruses. Have you ever wondered what it would be like inside an igloo? Now you can find out, though the museum’s air conditioning might not accurately reflect the temperature inside its replica shelter.

Yet this museum’s main attraction isn’t the mummies, nor is it the igloos. It isn’t even the hall of birds, hard as that may be to believe. No, the true crowd pleaser is clear just by looking at the statue in front of the building: Folk music artist and Pittsburgh native Stephen Foster! No, wait, the other statue in front of the building – Dippy the dinosaur!

Dippy the diplodocus stands tall and proud, a symbol of the museum’s dinosaur hall. This summer sees the completion of the hall’s renovation of “Dinosaurs in their Time,” an exhibit that features the skeletons of the prehistoric beasts in recreations of their natural habitats.

“Dinosaurs in their Time” also includes a display of not one but two tyrannosaurus rexes. Experts disagree as to whether or not these ancient carnivores were predators or scavengers. Experts do agree, however, that they were totally awesome.

To see the experts in action, check out the exhibit’s PaleoLab, a working facility where you can watch paleontologists working with fossils and skeletal remains.

If you prefer historical artifacts of the manmade?variety, adjacent to this museum is the museum of Art, also free with your ID. Here you can visit the Hall of Architecture?or see firsthand the works of masters like Pollock, Van Gogh and Picasso.

If Van Gogh’s sunflowers bore you, maybe you’d prefer a Campbell’s soup can. A trip Downtown – just hop a 500 bus on Fifth Avenue – will take you to The Andy Warhol Museum. The museum is primarily a collection of art by Warhol himself, a Pittsburgh native and pop artist. For those unfamiliar with the Warhol name, he painted that Velvet Underground banana poster that will be hanging in at least three of your friends’ dorms, if not your own.

Warhol’s eccentric, experimental style is on full display in this museum, which features screen prints, installations, sculpture and film. Have you ever wanted to stand in a room of helium-filled silver balloons?or watch a 15-minute video of people cooking breakfast? Of course you have, and The Warhol is the place to see all that and more. Slightly less abstract are Warhol’s famous prints of icons like Marilyn Monroe and Mick Jagger, all on display in a tribute to the pop culture that fascinated Warhol and inspired his art.

You’ve seen bones. Architecture. Warhol. But it’s all old, passe – you want to see something by a living artist. What if the art, however, was the living artist himself? Tom Sarver has opened the doors of his home to museum-goers, offering up his daily activities as art – though it isn’t as mundane as it sounds. Sarver’s house, dubbed The Tom Museum, features puppets, paintings and paper chains as parts of an engaging and theatrical experience. Part museum and part fun house, The Tom Museum is guaranteed to be unlike any art exhibition you’ve seen before.

Now you’re getting into the deep philosophical stuff. What about the left-brainers out there, though, just looking for a good time with something less abstract than experimental puppet shows? Look no further than the?Carnegie Science Center, located next door to Heinz Field. The Science Center combines fun with education – yes, it’s possible – with activities like tours of a submarine and hands-on experiments with rockets, lasers and wind.

Even though you don’t ride the big yellow school bus anymore,?and attending elementary school didn’t require thousands of dollars in loans each year, you can still get a bit nostalgic and take yourself out on a good old-fashioned field trip.

Free admission to the Carnegie Museums of Natural History and Art, along with The Warhol museum, resumes for students Aug. 25.