Things to Do in Painesville

Founded by sports enthusiast and former adolescent Rick Hart, Jump Start Sports works to enrich pupils' childhoods by developing useful life skills through athletics. Qualified counselors employ their wealth of experience working with children to help campers learn teamwork and fair play as well as the fundamentals of fielding baseballs, scoring soccer goals, or synchronizing pom-pom work. A course structure built around age-appropriate activities, group play, and free electives ensures that students never get bored, and an 8:1 pupil-teacher ratio enables one-on-one assistance to young champions as they practice the graceful art of pitching or the scheming intrigue of free-agent contract negotiation.

More than 120,000 species of trees, wildflowers, and native plants take root across The Holden Arboretum’s 3,600 acres of themed gardens and natural terrain. As birds chirp overhead and butterflies binge on nectar plants, visitors make their way across 12 gardens on guided tours or leisurely strolls. The most intrepid wanderers can spend a full day attempting to navigate more than 20 miles of trails that wind through a rhododendron garden, a mature beech-maple forest, and a waterfowl observation blind. Guides facilitate a more focused experience during forest explorations and home landscaping sessions, the latter of which demonstrate how to add a lifelike smile to topiary sculptures of the mailman. The arboretum also hosts numerous lecture series, youth programs, and special events such as Fridays in the Garden, where light refreshments accompany presentations or walks with horticultural experts.

Though most opportunities to try something new result in novices only getting their feet wet, a Discover Scuba class immerses its students' spirits and bodies in heated training pools. Practicing in the shallow waters of a pool allows participants to get comfortable in the equipment without the added pressure of incomprehensible depths and run-ins with nervous spotted ratfish. During training, instructors spend a few minutes discussing the basics of scuba before letting students hit the pool. Once in the water, students will get a lesson in submerged skills before being let loose to explore the underwater depths for abandoned pennies and bloated hamburgers.

What started out as a search for a fun alternative form of artistic expression led to the founding of an institution for preserving and sharing a millennia-old craft. That enthusiasm proved to be contagious, as more than 700 students from all ages and walks of life attended J & C Glass Studio's workshops in the first year alone.

Today, J & C Glass Studio continues to teach the art of glass blowing with instructional workshops that cater to beginner and advanced students. Passionate instructors share techniques performed almost the same way as artisans did thousands of years ago. During sessions, a mixture of sand, limestone, and silica is heated to 2,000 degrees until it reaches a honey-like consistency. From there, students shape it with tools, the power of suggestion, and their own breath, creating custom works of art that can decorate a mantel or desk for a lifetime.

An indoor skating rink, The Pond Family Friendly Ice Rink hosts skaters of all abilities during public-skating sessions—offered seven days a week. As the frosty stomping ground for the Geauga Youth Hockey League and the Chagrin Valley Figure Skating Club, The Pond helps young skaters find their stride on the ice without having to carve a treadmill out of a glacier. Skaters of all abilities can learn to glide gracefully across the rink during Learn to Skate lessons, which are offered multiple times a week.

In 1961, Peter Scimone and his wife Rosalie converted a humble patch of farmland into an epicenter for recreation, starting small with only 16 bowling lanes. Over the years, Roseland Lanes—which was named after Rosalie—was enhanced with a café and grill, pizza parlor, and pub all named for Pete. Today their daughter carries on the family tradition, warmly welcoming guests into a modern, 50-lane alley that features a game room, automatic scoring, 36-inch LCD TVs above every lane, and behemoth 47-inch screens scattered intermittently throughout the space. Roseland Lanes acts as home base for leagues and summer camps, and really flares to life during cosmic bowling on weekend and Wednesday evenings, when a DJ from Rock the House Entertainment steals the spotlight playing requested tunes through a 10,000-watt sound system.

When bowlers have exhausted themselves out on the lanes, they invade Papa Pete's Pizza for slices and wings or Pete's Cafe for burgers and ice cream. At Pete's Pub, liquor, beer, and wine quench thirsts and patrons compete for glory or the final seat on city council at the pool table, dartboards, or karaoke mike. Nearby, the Rose Room hosts up to 70 partygoers and the adjacent La Casa Bella Party Center sets the stage for fancy affairs.