Things to Do in Little Chute

Named for the mythical bird famous for its fiery rebirth, the Green Bay Phoenix shares its spirit with many esteemed sports programs, including a women’s basketball team that has been ranked as high as 16th in the NCAA Division I and a men’s squad that has made the NCAA Tournament four times. One of only four Division 1 schools in Wisconsin, the Green Bay Phoenix is a member of the Horizon League and their teams––including men’s tennis and women’s swimming and diving––have brought home a total of 29 league championships over the past decade.

Films still gasping for air from their first runs stop by to grace the screens of Fox Cinema Cafe, a second-run theater with weekend matinees and evening shows. Like a deep-fried VHS of Citizen Kane, the theater combines the best aspects of food and film with servers who deliver handmade pizzas, popcorn, snacks, and sandwiches to patrons’ tables as they watch their movie. Private rooms host birthday parties and corporate gatherings where guests can spread out to play games, unwrap presents, and reenact climactic speed-reading battles from their favorite films.

Sky-blue walls and sand-colored carpets greet each family at Kids Unleashed, where slides, hula hoops, and playhouses invite young ones to explore as they hone their gross motor skills. The make-believe beach beckons stocking-dressed feet to roam its shores, where children ride rocking horses and parents surf free WiFi instead of the carpet in a nearby lounge filled with coffee, conversation, and clear views of the kids’ activities. Story time piques young children’s interest in reading, and ping-pong tables help older kids to develop enough hand-eye coordination to read a book while performing a cartwheel. Parents may depart during most of the center’s classes and camps, as the creation of art projects stimulates inventiveness in each child, and cupcake-baking demonstrates that cakes have children too. After class or playtime, the café teems with homemade, health-conscious snacks.

Stretching 2,934 yards across the landscape from the longest tees, Bridgewood Golf Course presents players with a nine-hole layout made challenging by multiple water hazards and small, fast greens. As golfers gun for the par of 35, they must contest with ponds that come directly into play on at least eight different parts of the course. The park-like setting and shorter length provide an excellent opportunity to walk or somersault through the course, though golf carts are available.

For more than 35 years, Village Lanes has hosted neighborhood bowling-league playoffs, birthday parties, and weekday bowling trips. Whether visitors are barely capable of keeping balls out of the gutter or able to clean rain gutters with a well-aimed bowl, they find their niche at this family-run alley. USBC Silver-certified coach Jerry Polarek encourages his students to achieve their best during weekend and after-school youth leagues, and birthday and corporate parties of all sizes share pizza and celebratory high-fives lane side. After knocking self-satisfied smirks off the faces of taunting pins, of-age guests can share celebratory sips of beer and cocktails at the comfortable lounge or chow down on pizza and buffalo wings at the snack bar.

The instructors at Bricks 4 Kidz translate a curriculum molded around science, technology, engineering, and math into kid-friendly language using Legos. They encourage creativity at hands-on classes and parties, where they oversee youngsters in designing and erecting machines, catapults, buildings, and other colorful formations with architecture and physics in mind. By giving their labs whimsical themes, including outer space and roller coasters, they put the kids in an environment where they can work together to master tricky concepts such as friction and scale. Central theories and activities are tailored to groups based on age, ability, and which side of the “Does gravity exist?” debate they support.