Meadowside Nature Center
5100 Meadowside Lane
located (in Rock Creek Regional Park)
Rockville, Maryland 20855
301-924-4141
Update: Do to inclement weather, Meadowside Nature Center and surrounding trials will be closed Saturday, February 6th.
Located in Rock Creek Regional Park, Meadowside Nature Center offers hands-on natural and cultural history programs for families, schools, and scouts. Visitors can spend their time hiking our 8 miles of Nature Trails or visiting our owls, hawks, and American Bald Eagle in our Raptor Aviaries. Inside visitors can explore the diverse habits found in Maryland as they crawl through a cave or look at the world from a fish's point of view in our Legacy of the Land Exhibit. Our Curiosity Corner discovery room contains books, games, puzzles, and more live animals for young naturalists to explore nature in child-friendly environment. Visitors can also experience the lives of the Maryland pioneer and Eastern Woodland Indian families in our Legacy of the People exhibit were they can try on clothes, play games, and touch animal skins.
Self-guided groups are welcome to tour the Nature Center September through mid-June FREE. There is a $1 per child fee for self-guided groups of 10 or more from mid-June through August. Reservations are required for all groups visiting the nature center.
Featured Winter Programs
Click here to register for our Winter Programs. We now feature Saturday family programming!
NOTE: To make registration easier, make note of the course # and register at ParkPASS.
Summer Camps 2010
Summer camps feature lively hands-on activities, games, nature walks, and crafts.
MNC offers both partial and full-day camps to meet the needs of you and your child.
Each week starts a new adventure. Click here to be part of the fun!
Nature Everywhere
It's new! Nature Everywhere programs "take kids outside for science in the schoolyard."
Saturday programming at Meadowside!
Maple Sugaring Breakfast
Follow the process of how maple sap is collected from the tree, and then boiled into syrup. Complete the process by
sampling syrup on pancakes. All participants age 2 and above must register.
#95701 2 & up $8 2/27 Saturday 10:00am-11:30am
Click here to register!
Nature
notes from Meadowside!
Hibernation Time!
In fall, animals get ready for winter by eating extra food and storing it as body fat to use for energy while hibernating.
Bears are a good example. Other animals such as frogs and turtles bury themselves in mud to hibernate, absorbing the
oxygen in the cold water through their skin to breathe. Insects look for winter shelter in holes in the ground, under the
bark of trees, deep inside rotting logs or in any small crack they can find. Rabbit and chipmunks sleep underground as a
kind of partial hibernation but do come out in the winter if the temperature is not too cold.
Montgomery County Department of Parks