Jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Credit: Dreamstime

In our digital world, visiting a museum, zoo or aquarium is just a click away. Check out these sites offering virtual tours and animal webcams.

  • At Google Arts and Culture, take virtual tours of thousands of museums and art collections, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to the Palace of Versailles in France. Photos from LIFE magazine’s online collection make good writing prompts for older kids.
  • Watch the ape, panda, tiger and elephant cams — and more — at the San Diego Zoo’s website.
  • Take an online tour of the Great Wall of China here.
  • Tune in to 10 different webcams, from sea otters to sharks, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website.
  • Watch a video about Impressionist artist Claude Monet’s garden here.
  • Virtually visit the Gervais Family Farm in Enosburg Falls to learn how farmers take care of their cows here.
  • The National Aquarium in Baltimore offers live streams of its Blacktip Reefs, Jellies Invasion and Pacific Coral Reef on its website.
  • At the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, biologists are taking lessons online. They host a daily virtual classroom on Facebook Live at 11 a.m. Metroparks naturalists go live at 1 p.m.

This article was originally published in Seven Days’ monthly parenting magazine, Kids VT.

Alison Novak is a staff writer at Seven Days, with a focus on K-12 education. A former elementary school teacher in the Bronx and Burlington, Vt., Novak previously served as managing editor of Kids VT, Seven Days' parenting publication. She won a first-place award in education reporting from the New England Newspaper & Press Association and a third-place award in beat reporting from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia. She's written cover stories about Vermont's childcare crisis, PCB testing...