PEEC expands free Nature at Night series for Los Alamos families

Free Wednesday evenings in July will turn the Los Alamos Nature Center into a no-cost after-work stop for families, with Nature at Night running from 4 to 6 p.m. and featured presenters beginning at 5 p.m. The series is open to all ages and is built around hands-on programs from community partners across north-central New Mexico.

The July schedule starts July 1 with Storytime with the Mesa Public Library. It continues July 8 with the Santa Fe Children’s Museum, July 15 with Worms and Wildflowers Nature School, and July 22 with the IMAP Education Team, which will bring NASA-related science programming to the center at 2600 Canyon Road.

Nature at Night is an expansion of PEEC’s Summer Family Evenings, not a replacement for them. Del Norte Credit Union is sponsoring the July lineup, extending a relationship that has helped support PEEC’s summer evening programming since 2015.

The programs fit PEEC’s role as a civic learning hub at the Los Alamos Nature Center, an award-winning building created with Capital Improvement Project funds approved by Los Alamos County voters in 2012. The center connects people to nature through indoor and outdoor exhibits and programs, and its mission is to strengthen people’s ties to the canyons, mesas, mountains and skies of Northern New Mexico.

The nature center serves about 40,000 adults and children each year through exhibits, public programs, school lessons, field trips and the planetarium. Support from donors and sponsors helps keep the building open with free admission and lets PEEC offer free or low-cost events.