Things to Do in Oakville

At Blueheel Dance Studio, instructors encourage students to find the dance that’s pulsing within. Using the internationally recognized Professional Dance Vision International Dance Association syllabus, instructors begin by emphasizing simple steps, syncopation, and rhythm. After establishing a firm base, students are set free to explore their skills in group lessons and social dance parties staged on the studio’s expansive hardwood dance floor. Offering instruction in Ballroom, Salsa, Merengue, Tango, and Bachata, instructors open the door to dance forms that convey a gamut of emotions ranging from love and joy to passion and wild indifference.

Creative Kids Place engages exploring minds aged 2–13 in its colourful arts-and-play centre through drop-in sessions, summer camps, holiday camps, birthday parties, and special programs. During drop-in sessions, children can stuff teddy bears, paint T-shirts, or string beads of bracelets as preschoolers and toddlers bond with their parents over creatively minded toys or frolic in costume in the dress-up area. Creative Kids Place provides all needed craft supplies, paints, and play activities, and changes its crafts weekly to ensure children don't steal the company's secrets and start their own franchises.

When not playing, parents use free WiFi or lounge on the centre's couches amid bright red and green walls and tables draped in decorative tarps. Alternatively, crafters can choose from an array of sculpted, three-dimensional pottery canvases including penguins, dinosaurs, unicorns, princesses, and more. After wee artists paint their pieces to express colour appreciation or camouflage them from envious stuffed animals, staff fires completed sculptures in an on-site kiln.

At Fieldgate Stables Ltd., mother-daughter team Susan Coxhead and Michelle Vaillancourt promote horsemanship for riders of various skill levels. Their quiet and well-schooled horses carry students during lessons in various riding disciplines including dressage, hunter, jumper, and cross-country. With detailed, one-on-one coaching, students are encouraged to progress at their own pace and riders are paired with horses based on careful consideration of their temperaments, skill levels, and the compatibility of their star signs. Lessons also teach participants to untack and cool out their four-hooved friends, which keeps them from sweating through the tuxedos they change into post-workout.

After making a name for herself in the world of theatrical costuming during stints on the production teams of The Lion King and Mamma Mia!, Dilys Tong co-created Sew Be It Studio in 2005 in order to inspire others to craft their own wearable art. Lindsey Wise, a graphic designer and former magazine art director, joined her in 2009, and together they helm workshops and classes alongside a cast of dedicated instructors. At their two studios, the staff lead students through hands-on tutorials or arm them with DIY patterns for items such as a lace tank top, a flower headpiece, or a leather mini wallet ideal for fitting into a regular-size wallet. Enhancing the space are studio mascots Betty and Madi, a pair of well-dressed pups who can often be found lounging around in a variety of miniature ensembles.

Replete with a five-level jungle gym and rock-climbing walls, Lil’ Monkeys Indoor Playgrounds’ 15,000-square-foot fun center has won more than 15 best of awards from the Burlington Post, the Hamilton Spectator, and the Flamborough Review. In the play area In this environment adorned with palms and a green turf floor, kids slip down the swirl slide, dive into the foam-building-block pit, and navigate the boo balls and punch-bag forest. As parents lounge in plush leather chairs with a complimentary coffee, kids bounce from mechanical-horse rides to the enclosed basketball court, their smiles leading the way. Alternatively, parents can get into the action, joining their youngsters at the twisty slides and monkey ropes to relive their college-dorm days. Additionally, the center’s staff accommodates 2.5-hour birthday parties with a choice of four private-party-room packages built around pizza, ice-cream cake, and kids having fun climbing and running through the playground.

Littered with billboards and dilapidated shacks, the abandoned 6-acre gravel pit looked like the last place you'd want to plant a garden. But from 1930 to 1931, the Royal Botanical Gardens transformed the area by arranging weathered limestone rocks from nearby quarries into linked paths and staircases winding around ponds and waterfalls. Since then, the 2,700-acre nonprofit facility has continued to display approximately 40,000 plants and 50 living plant collections in its five gardens.

The property also hosts three nature sanctuaries. The largest, Cootes Paradise, encompasses 16 creeks and a 320-hectacre river-mouth marsh on more than 600 hectares of land. Visitors can explore stream crossings or check out the gardens from above on 31 scenic trails that range across more than 21 kilometres with more than 20 lookouts. After long expeditions, visitors can make their way to the three onsite restaurants, browse gardening tools in the shop, or attend one of the garden's many monthly events.