Kids Events in Bel Air, MD

Ready to explore locally-made treasures and unique finds? The Belle Aire Market in Downtown Bel Air, MD opens on Friday, May 1, 2026, and runs through October, featuring artisan crafts, antiques, and handcrafted items you won't find in big-box stores. It's a wonderful weekend family outing where you can support local makers and find one-of-a-kind gifts.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Looking for an evening of compelling live performance? Center Stage in Baltimore, MD presents world-class theater that brings stories to life on stage. From intimate dramas to bold contemporary pieces, this Baltimore cultural institution offers experiences that spark conversation and connection for theater-loving families.

via Center Stage

Bring wellness and nature together with Family Yoga at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Led by instructor Marcy Kelly, this Wellness in the Gardens session offers a peaceful way for families to stretch, breathe, and reconnect while surrounded by beautiful topiary landscapes.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Lealie Bevard, a determined Tuskegee Institute student, attends the Shiloh Baptist Church convention in Birmingham on September 19, 1902, to request a scholarship for continued education at Harvard. But a beautiful gathering turns tragic when a stampede breaks out and Lealie is injured. While convalescing at the home of fellow Tuskegee student Milton Rafferty, Lealie’s concerns for her future are set aside to help Milton uncover a mystery revolving around missing church funds and a possible murder. Perhaps a pause in Lealie’s well-laid plans can be used for good. . .and lead to love. Maryland author, Terri J. Haynes, visits the Edmondson Avenue Branch Library, to share stories about the writing life and read excerpts from her new book, The Daughter of Shiloh. The author will be available for Q & A and a book signing after her presentation.

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

Charles Holden will discuss his book, Republican Populist, as part of the Pratt Maryland Department’s Let’s Talk About Maryland author series. Typically a maligned figure in American political history, former vice president Spiro T. Agnew is often overlooked. Although he is largely remembered for his alliterative speeches, attacks on the media and East Coast intellectuals, and his resignation from office in 1973 in the wake of tax evasion charges, Agnew had a significant impact on the modern Republican Party that is underappreciated. It is impossible, in fact, to understand the current internal struggles of the Republican Party without understanding this populist "everyman" and prototypical middle-class striver who was one of the first proponents of what would become the ideology of Donald Trump’s GOP. Republican Populist examines Agnew’s efforts to make the Republican Party representative of the "silent majority." Under the tutelage of a group of talented speechwriters assigned to Agnew by President Richard Nixon including Pat Buchanan and William Safire, Agnew crafted the populist-tinged, anti-establishment rhetoric that helped turn the Republican Party into a powerful national electoral force that has come to define American politics into the current era. A fascinating political portrait of Agnew from his pre–vice presidential career through his scandal-driven fall from office and beyond, this book is a revelatory examination of Agnew’s role as one of the founding fathers of the modern Republican Party and of the link between Agnew’s "people’s party" and the fraught party of populists and businessmen today. About the Author: Charles Holden, professor of History at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, is the author of The New Southern University: Academic Freedom and Liberalism at UNC. About the Program: To attend in person please register here. Doors will open to registered attendees at 6 pm. A local bookseller will be on-site and have book

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

Create lasting memories with your little one through CAREGIVER & ME NATURE CAMP at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD, June 15-19, 2026. This unique summer camp keeps parents and caregivers actively involved in hands-on nature activities, games, and garden exploration, making it perfect for bonding while discovering the natural world together.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Discover the joy of nature exploration with NATURE PALS - Little Fledglings, a full-week summer camp at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD running June 15-19, 2026. Perfect for toddlers and preschoolers, this engaging program combines outdoor discovery, imaginative play, and hands-on nature activities in a nurturing garden environment.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Jason G. Green was raised on fellowship—literally. Fellowship Lane served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher’s kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to public service. After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the young attorney spent four and a half years serving in the White House as special assistant to President Obama. However, Green’s government career was cut short by a devastating call. It seemed his beloved ninety-five-year-old grandmother was on her deathbed. At her side, he listened in disbelief while she detailed her life story dating back to her 1918 birth in Quince Orchard, a town that once stood where they now sat, erased by the vestiges of time. How could he have never known the legacy of this robust community that he’d descended from? How could its entire existence have vanished from history but for the memory of a few elders? Green’s historical research uncovered a surprising trove of tales about his newly freed ancestors who built an African American house of worship, and whose progeny, on the eve of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination, made the brave decision to create an integrated church. Quince Orchard’s lost story is part of what Green calls the texture in the American fabric: the moral leadership of the Black church, the longstanding resilience of the Black community, and the transformative love of the Black family. Fueled by a new understanding of his own roots, Green traces his paternal family through a century of life in a single place. Seeking answers to deeply personal, contemporary questions about belonging, he finds that and more truths from the compassionate, communal-led lives of his forebearers. Jason Green will be joined in conversation by Karsonya Wise Whitehead, host of Today with Dr. Kaye on WEAA 88.9 FM. About the Author: Jason G. Green is a Maryland-born community organizer, attorney, storyteller and entrepreneur. Gr

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

When the colonial era began, Europeans did not consider themselves as “Whites,” and Native Americans did not think of themselves as “Indians.” Yet as a genocidal struggle for America unfolded over the course of generations, all that changed. Euro-Americans developed a sense of racial identity, superiority, and national mission-of being chosen. They contended that Indians were damned to disappear so Whites could spread Christian civilization. Native people countered that the Great Spirit had created Indians and Whites separately and intended America to belong to Indians alone. In The Chosen and the Damned, acclaimed historian David J. Silverman traces Indian-White racial arguments across four centuries, from the bloody colonial wars for territory to the national wars of extermination justified as “Manifest Destiny"; from the creation of reservations and boarding schools to the rise of the Red Power movement and beyond. In this transformative retelling, Silverman shows how White identity, defined against Indians, became central to American nationhood. He also reveals how Indian identity contributed to Native Americans' resistance and resilience as modern tribal people, even as it has sometimes pit them against one another on the basis of race. The epochal story of race in America is typically understood as a Black and White issue. The Chosen and the Damned restores the defining role Native people have played, and continue to play, in our national history. About the Author: David J. Silverman is a professor of history at George Washington University. He is the author of the award-winning This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (Bloomsbury, 2019), as well as Thundersticks, Ninigret, Red Brethren, and Faith and Boundaries. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, National Geographic, and the Daily Beast. He lives in Washington, D.C. About the Prog

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

In a groundbreaking global exploration of the ideas that drove the American Revolution, a prize-winning historian shines a light on the defiance of marginalized peoples all over the world. In her powerful new history of the American Revolution, Sarah M. S. Pearsall argues that the American Founding Fathers did not have a unique claim on the revolutionary spirit. The thirteen colonies that became the United States, she reminds us, were not even half of the British colonies that existed in the eighteenth century. In her sparkling and original Freedom Round the Globe, Pearsall uncovers the insurgents, freedom lovers, and dreamers in India, West Africa, North America, Europe, China, and West Indian islands who shaped the nature of American rebellion and nationhood. In each fresh and compelling chapter of Freedom Round the Globe, Pearsall plucks a keyword from the Declaration of Independence—security, happiness, respect– finding its spark in a far-flung place. In an Edinburgh club where women were first invited into philosophical conversations, she explores what the pursuit of happiness meant to women and men of all sorts. She traces how novel forms of slavery provoked a new use of the word liberty in Connecticut petitions as well as in cries of “liberty or death.” On a Kolkata street where Indians protested relentless taxes, Pearsall finds a critique of oppressive imperial government that galvanized Americans in their protests and parties against the tea of the English East India Company. In rural Germany, boy soldiers sent abroad to die for Britain complicate who can lay claim to being civilized in a brutal war. In telling the extraordinary tales of Friends of Liberty protesting tyranny around the world, Pearsall restores these individuals and movements to their rightful place in the vital story of the American Revolution and the nation it created. The result is a stirring and surprising revisioning of our history. About the Author: Sarah M. S. Pearsa

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

Since the nation’s founding, Black Americans have had a unique perspective on the U.S. experience—a “second sight”—that reveals the truth about the nation to itself. As renowned media scholar Sarah J. Jackson charts in this bold and daring masterwork, at the center of this effort has been an extraordinary cast of Black journalists, photographers, filmmakers, radio hosts, podcasters and other mediamakers who have drawn on the visionary tradition of second sight to advance democracy and broaden our most fundamental American values. When Black mediamakers raise their voices and speak uncomfortable truths about America, they shape memories of the nation and push us toward a future more closely aligned with our espoused values. For two centuries, this “second sight” has been an overlooked engine of American democracy. Drawing from W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophical work, along with deep historical analysis and dozens of interviews with today’s most active Black mediamakers, A Second Sight shows these visionaries positioned at the margins of their industries and navigating fraught relationships to power. They’ve warned of the greatest dangers to democracy—from slavery to Nazism, and mass incarceration to misinformation. Their work is central to our culture and politics. Yet it is devalued, met with violent censure, or achieved only via ingenious work-arounds. This tension has sharpened their commitments to truth. Now one of our nation’s foremost scholars of American media, Sarah J. Jackson, presents an appraisal that situates Black mediamakers at the vanguard of telling the American story. Brilliant, urgent and illuminating, A Second Sight is an authentic and candid grappling with a discordant thread in the American fabric and, in tracing a bolder vision for the nation, presents a way forward. About the Author: Sarah J. Jackson is an Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and co-director of the Media, Inequality and Change Center at th

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

A modern retelling of The Philadelphia Story, Wasp’s Nest is a witty, gripping love triangle unfolding over the course of seven chaotic days at a Cape Cod wedding Tess wants nothing more than for her upcoming society wedding to overshadow the failure of her first marriage. Her fiancé Warren, a steady soon-to-be state senator, is nothing like her first husband. Tess’s relationship with working-class artist Peter was a passionate crash-and-burn, and a chapter of her life that she's ready to forget. Peter hasn’t seen Tess in five years, so he’s shocked to receive an invitation to her wedding. But he’s moved on too, and it wouldn’t hurt to prove it by showing up with a handsome younger man as his plus-one. Mitch, an aspiring writer, is intrigued by Peter and jumps at the chance to pry into the lives of his Waspy ex-in-laws. What he’s not bargained for is developing serious feelings for both Peter and Peter’s ex—Tess, the bride. But Peter and Tess have complex desires of their own, and Mitch is dangerously close to uncovering them. Wasp's Nest is a fast-paced, humorous, and heartfelt exploration of the shape of our affections that proves real love triangles connect on all sides. Kat Stoddard will be joined in conversation by novelist Lacey Dunham. About the Author: Kat Stoddard lives with her daughter in Baltimore. Wasp’s Nest is her debut novel. About the Moderator: Lacey Dunham is the author of the novels The Belles, named a Best Book of 2025 by Library Journal and Crime Reads, and Fall of the House of Graystone. She lives in Washington, DC with too many books, but only two cats. Find her at laceyndunham.com. About the Program: To attend in person please register here. Doors will open to registered attendees at 2 pm. A local bookseller will be on-site and have books available for purchase.ADA accessible parking spot, free street parking, and bike parking available. The EV charging station is temporarily out of service.

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

Turn your budding paleontologist into an ornithologist with NATURE DETECTIVES CAMP - Living Dinosaurs: Our Feathered Friends at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD, July 13-17, 2026. Kids explore the connection between ancient dinosaurs and modern birds through hands-on investigation, observation, and nature detective work in this exciting week-long summer camp.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Join us to celebrate the finalists of the 2026 Poetry Contest, judged by Poet Lore. Christina Daub, Nnenna Aduaka, Christina Borgoyn, and Carol Buell will read, and the Executive Editor of Poet Lore, Emily Holland, will emcee. About the Poets: Christina Daub, winner of the 2026 Poetry Contest, is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net–nominated poet who has taught poetry at George Washington University and at several schools in the Maryland and Virginia poets-in-the-schools programs. She co-founded and co-edited The Plum Review, a national poetry magazine, and curated The Plum Reading Series and Plum Writers Retreats. Her work has been translated into German, Greek, Italian, and Russian. She is also a translator of poetry from Spanish and German. Currently she is the co-editor of the hunger poems anthology (due out later this year) titled Turning Poetry into Food: A Collection Of Poetry X Hunger Poems, the proceeds of which will go to anti-hunger causes. You can find her at christinadaub.com. Nnenna Aduaka, who received an honorable mention in the contest, is a Maryland based poet currently studying Technology and Information Design at the University of Maryland, College Park. When writing, she enjoys exploring themes such as memory, migration, color, and inheritance. While completing her undergraduate degree, she is also working on her own poetry collection. Christina Borgoyn, who received an honorable mention in the contest, is a nonbinary poet living in the Baltimore area. They are a collector of ink and piercings. When not working for the Maryland Department of the Environment, they can be found relaxing at home with a good book. Carol Buell, who received an honorable mention in the contest, decided in seventh grade, while working on the requirements for her Girl Scout poetry badge, that she was a poet, and was influenced even earlier by her grandfather's encouragement to memorize poems for a reward of 50 cents each. She revels in her love of language i

via Pratt Library (Baltimore Public Library System)

Celebrate Christmas in July with your family in Downtown Bel Air, MD on Wednesday, July 15, 2026! This festive community event invites families to embrace holiday spirit during summer with special promotions from local businesses, themed activities, and opportunities to support nearby shops. Don't forget to dress in your favorite (or funniest) ugly Christmas sweater!

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Combine science and nature in one amazing week with SCIENCE CAMP - Avian Adventures at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD, July 20-24, 2026. Young scientists will investigate bird behavior, anatomy, and habitat through hands-on experiments, observation projects, and outdoor exploration in this engaging STEM-focused summer camp.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Bring Christmas cheer to summer! Christmas in July in Downtown Bel Air (Saturday, July 25) is a unique seasonal celebration where families can shop, celebrate, and create unforgettable summer memories. Dress in your most festive (or hilariously ugly) Christmas attire and explore the amazing local businesses downtown,it's a fun way to support Bel Air merchants while enjoying holiday spirit in the warmth of July.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Looking for a creative way to spark your child's imagination this summer? Art in Nature Camp, Wings & Wonder at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD combines hands-on art projects with outdoor exploration for kids ages 9-11. During this week-long session (July 27-31, 2026), your child will create nature-inspired artwork while discovering the beauty of the gardens.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Ready to experience one of Harford County's most celebrated summer events? The MD State BBQ Bash takes over Downtown Bel Air on Saturday, August 15, 2026, with mouth-watering barbecue, live entertainment, and family-friendly activities. This street festival features a championship BBQ competition, so your family can enjoy award-winning flavors while soaking in the community atmosphere.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Strengthen your family bond while finding inner peace at Family Yoga with instructor Marcy Kelly at Ladew Topiary Gardens in Bel Air, MD. On Saturday, August 22, 2026, you and your children can practice wellness together in the serene garden setting, perfect for families looking to slow down and reconnect. This calming experience combines movement with nature in a picturesque outdoor space.

via Ladew Topiary Gardens

Halloween magic comes to life when you head to Trick or Treating in Downtown Bel Air on Saturday, October 31, 2026,and the best part? It's completely FREE! Local businesses throughout Downtown Bel Air open their doors to costumed trick-or-treaters, creating a safe, community-focused Halloween experience where families can celebrate together. Your kids will love collecting treats while exploring the heart of Bel Air, MD.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Get your holiday shopping done while supporting local artists at The Belle Aire Holiday Market in Downtown Bel Air, MD! This open-air, holiday-themed artisan market runs for four Saturdays starting November 28, 2026, offering handcrafted gifts, unique decorations, and festive treats perfect for families. It's the ideal place to find one-of-a-kind presents while soaking in the seasonal spirit.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance

Join a cherished tradition that's been bringing holiday joy to Bel Air families for over 30 years! The Bel Air Christmas Parade & Tree Lighting Ceremony on Saturday, December 5, 2026, transforms Downtown Bel Air and Shamrock Park into a winter wonderland. Watch festive floats, meet Santa, and gather as a community to light the official town tree,a magical experience your family will remember for years.

via Bel Air Downtown Alliance