The Mission of the Bellefonte Community Children's Garden (BCCG) Project is to educate children about plant science, horticulture, ecology, and conservation. The two primary programs of the BCCG are the Bellefonte Second Grade Educational Outreach and the Family Discovery Days.
Photo credit: Cindy Dawso Van Druff
Located behind the Centre County Historical Society in Bellefonte, the Community Children's Garden is a delightful oasis for kids of all ages to enjoy.
Events are held in the Bellefonte Community Children's Garden, which is run in partnership with the Centre County Library (Bellefonte Branch), The Bellefonte Garden Club, and the Penn State Master Gardeners of Centre County. The garden provides a living garden where children can explore, learn and experience the sheer delight of growing in nature.
The BCCG Second Grade Outreach project was to celebrate its 10th season in 2020. As of 2019, over 475 children have attended weekly outdoor classroom lessons in the garden.
The BCCG includes three rows of raised vegetable beds with 66 student garden plots; a fairy garden; a storyteller's corner with a main chair and seating, an herb garden; an "Animal" garden full of plants with animal names (for example, [rattlesnake master plant] ). One special feature is a giant teepee, where we plant the "Three Sisters": corn, squash, and beans. Together, these represent the indigenous peoples of North America and their most important agricultural crops. A second significant feature of the BCCG is a pollinator garden. The pollinator garden is a satellite of the Snetsinger Butterfly Garden Habitat, an educational garden site that was developed by the late Dr. Robert Snetsinger, professor emeritus of entomology at Penn State University. Dr. Snetsinger's mission was to educate the public about the importance of butterflies as critical components of many ecosystems, many of which are in decline throughout the world.
Family Discovery Days
Family Discovery Day (FDD) programs are held four times a year on Saturdays during each season fall, winter and spring. The educational programs and activities are developmentally appropriate for children between the ages of three and ten and their parents. Each event is based on a theme representing the season. Crafts and activities are designed to teach concepts such as germination; bird identification and feeding; vegetables; and pollinators. The events take place every 9 to 10 weeks, from 10:30AM to 12:30 PM, in the Bellefonte Community Children's Garden or the Bellefonte Branch of the Centre County Library.
Family Discovery Days re-created for 2020 and beyond
As with almost every youth program, all hands-on and face-to-face activities have shifted drastically. The realignment of the face-to-face seasonal hands-on FDD programs to all virtual programming is the focus of the Search for Excellence application. We were delighted to discover that it was possible to create virtual activities and lessons that were as successful, engaging and as interesting as the hands-on events.
To start the planning of the virtual Family Discovery Days (FDD), an overarching theme was selected: "Connect to the Land". The seasonal topics selected are winter birds; super seeds; tales and tails (plants and animals found in the garden and indigenous community gardening going beyond the Three Sisters), and fall harvest a time to reemphasize the focus of connecting back to the land. A three-pronged approach was devised to include hands-on activities, video instructions of the activities, and supporting videos and images posted on the Bellefonte Community Children's Garden Facebook page. The hands-on activities were pre-packed in kits with supplies for the season's activity. The kits were made available on a first come first serve basis at the Circulation desk of the library. If parents were unable to drop in at the library, the instructional video with instructions for the activities using their own materials was made available on the Facebook page.
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