Things to Do in Oshkosh

Katie Brucks heads a team of experienced riding instructors at Lucky Stables LLC who teach students proper horsemanship in an indoor arena. The stable’s gentle, people-friendly horses let riders improve their technique during lessons geared to help them accomplish specific goals, whether that involves showing competitively or searching for a new way to cheat in the Tour de France.

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.

Communities tend to like places that have good roots. That's one reason why Green Bay Press-Gazette readers voted the locally owned and operated Ashwaubenon Bowling Alley the 2012 Best of the Bay's Best Bowling Alley. For more than three decades, guests have flocked to the facility's 60 lanes to test their ball-rolling and pin-eating skills alongside friends and family. Each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, DJ Rusty Lee's tracks work with black lights and fog machines to create a nightclub-like cosmic bowling experience.

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.