North Park Village Nature Center

Just where you've always wanted to go! A former tuberculosis sanitarium!

No, really, you do want to go. There's a nature center with a pretty decent chunk of land that is filled with trails (near Pulaski and Bryn Mawr). The first part of it you'll find is the nature center itself. The first room you walk into has a table filled with bones, horns and other animal stuff including a turtle shell. The best part is that kids can play with all of these things. There are also a couple of dioramas showing off local insect life, though only the charismatic kind, and some of the bird nests you might find. There's also a room for small kids and a meeting room for all of the programs they put on.

But really, you're here for the trails. Despite being in the city and despite limited land, there are three pretty distinct ecological communities. There is a savanna/forest, prairie and a wetland. There are signs explaining things, which are worse for the wear, along the trails, which are well marked. You might want to do a little wikipedia work in advance (which is where the links above go) to get around this problem.

There are quite a few different kinds of birds here, so you may want to bring a pair of binoculars. Or just borrow theirs.

How this pertains to elementary grade students

Students this age can learn how different plants and animals live in different places. Different plants can grow in places where the ground is wet than in places where the ground is dry. Different animals, birds in the case of this place, have different ways of making a living. These differences lead to plants and animals with the same way of making a living to live in similar sorts of places. That is to say: if you see cattails, you should be on the look out for red wing blackbirds too. 

Fort Dearborn

We went down to where Fort Dearborn was. Chicago more or less started at Fort Dearborn. Yes, du Sable was here before the fort. (And the site of his house is at Pioneer Square, which is across Michigan Avenue from the Wrigley Building. The site probably merits its own entry, but for now it's here.)

Anyway. Fort Dearborn stood at the intersection of Wacker and Michigan. Two of them actually. The first was built in 1803 only to be destroyed in 1812 at the Battle of Fort Dearborn (which will probably also get its own entry). The fort was rebuilt in 1816, but by 1857 it was done for. It was razed, though Wikipedia makes it sound like some of it was still left to get burnt down in the Great Chicago Fire.

Today, there's very little to see. A couple of plaques and carvings are on the London Guarantee Building (360 N Michigan, mostly covered in scaffolding as of September 2014). The real deal to see is in the sidewalk. There are markers placed into the sidewalks at the corners of Michigan and Wacker that outline the location of Fort Dearborn. Or at least the portions of it that were where the sidewalks are now.