The Pfeiffer Center offers a variety of farm-based education, gardening, and experiential environmental education programs for children. We serve diverse communities and often bring together children who do not meet in other school or social settings. All our activities for children help build the future health of the earth by encouraging an attitude of reverence and joy toward nature and all its beings.
The Outdoor Lesson provides experiential environmental education programming for public and private schools. Activities are designed to support curriculum guidelines for grades K-5, including ESL and special learners; our students experience a wide array of seasonal garden and farm activities that highlight the agricultural heritage of the lower Hudson Valley. Through hands-on activities, students at the Outdoor Lesson absorb memorable lessons about the origins and content of the food we eat, and the connections between human labor and the food on our table.
The Pfeiffer Center and the Nature Place Day Camp have teamed up to offer Farm and Garden Days, two weeks of garden-oriented outdoor activities in August. Campers aged 6-12 join the Pfeiffer Center gardeners in planting, harvesting, making fresh herb sun teas, baking bread, visiting the honeybees, and more - with plenty of time left over for swims, exploring nearby woods and streams, art, farm tasks at Duryea Farm, music and games. It's a wonderful opportunity for children to finish their summer in out-of-doors style!
Neighbor to Neighbor
This afterschool program, a collaboration with Green Meadow Waldorf School, runs for sixteen weeks of each school year. It bridges diverse communities through experiences in nature, gardening, and social activities (games, projects, and conversation). Serving students from nearby public schools, the program fosters mentor/mentee relationships between middle school and high school students under the guidance of Pfeiffer Center gardener-educators, building a sense of community through guided experiences of the social and work realms.
Nature Place Day Camp
The Pfeiffer Center provides a rich variety of garden experiences for campers at The Nature Place, a non-competitive, nature-oriented day camp that operates from June through early August on the grounds of Green Meadow Waldorf School and the Threefold Educational Center campus.
Green Meadow Waldorf School
The Pfeiffer Center provides gardening classes to Grades 6, 7 and 8 of Green Meadow Waldorf School, one of the oldest and largest Waldorf schools in the United States.