Kids Activities in Shenandoah

With all those newfangled camps out there designed to get kids interested in things like university professorships or contract law, Camp Chameleon goes back to the basics. Here, the staff just wants kids to be kids—whether by splashing around in the pool or completing a nifty project during arts and crafts, which extends to include dance, cooking, and talent shows. Many of the activities at the camp are held outdoors, helping to foster an appreciation for nature while developing skills that encourage teamwork in a non-competitive environment. Five days a week, field trips provide the opportunity to visit local attractions such as arcades, aquatic parks, laser tag, bounce houses, and indoor sports facilities.

With only 130 seats, Mosaic Theatre can justly claim that there’s not a bad seat in the house. Designed to be a maximally flexible space, the venue changes its seating for every performance to enhance the theatergoing experience for visitors or to clear way for the mid-play goat chorus line.

Kid's Hub stimulates restless young minds and exercises rubbery young limbs with an indoor playscape chock full of physical and creative activities. Parents and their progeny can put aside their differences in age and Law and Order preference while spending 10 afternoons clambering through an indoor playground, competing for digital supremacy in educational computer games, or creating arts and crafts masterpieces. Air hockey and foosball entertain sports fans and fans of simulacra, and reading areas beckon to burgeoning scholars. Kids with a dramatic flair can dress up in costumes and prepare for future careers as firefighters, police officers, or police-officer impersonators.

For 17 years, Flamingo Gardens has gathered plant experts, landscapers, and other gardening connoisseurs to its annual festival. This year, the Broward Bonsai Society joins in the fun with an exhibition of the varied shapes and levels of perfection its miniature trees can hold. Displays from Alexander Farms, Greenhouse Orchids, and other vendors entice the eyes while guests wander about, taking in colorful performances from butterfly stilt-walkers and West African drummers. At the Butterfly Encounter, guests learn lepidopterist lore from expert Mike Rich while feeding live butterflies and teaching them about the updated food pyramid.

Wee ones, meanwhile, can head to the Kids Gardening Zone to decorate their own pots and plant a seed or romp through the gardens on a scavenger hunt. Plant experts also hold classes and demonstrations, including "Mounting Orchids & Basic Orchid Culture," and take guests on guided tours through the botanical gardens.

Within a neon-colored lair packed end-to-end with colorfully flashing games, GameRoom’s arcade master invite players of all ages to plunk down their tokens for a chance to experience games as they were meant to be played. Classics such as skee ball and claw machines reward skill with handsome prizes, and driving simulators and action games impress with modern graphics and head-to-head competition. Once the games are through, competitors can retire to the onsite Johnny Rocket's complete with 28 flat-screen HDTVs or tell their defeated friends which toppings to choose at the frozen yogurt shop.

Lazy Meadows Farm's internationally trained and USDF-certified owner, Michele Herrmann, focuses exclusively on studying and sharing dressage-style riding with students of all experience levels. Novice riders learn to trot from within two riding arenas, while more advanced riders gallop and prance past wavering palms and rustling pines. The docile equine animals inhabit 14 dressage stalls that share a verdant 5.5-acre landscape with a terra-cotta-roofed barn and a stock of big cats for very advanced riders.