Things to Do in Waverly

A mid-Michigan institution since 1929, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra performs for more than 20,000 visitors every year. Music director and conductor Timothy Muffitt currently leads its roster of professional musicians in concerts that explore a variety of musical styles, including classical masterworks, a pops and chamber series, and brassy big-band engagements.

Woldumar Nature Center greets visitors with a coterie of trees, flowers, and grasses that populate 178 acres of diverse environs representing the region's larger ecosystem. Visitors explore the center's trails spanning 5 miles of lush scenery, which treats them to a prairie of wildflowers waving their vivid heads in the breeze, the Grand River flowing throughout 1.25 miles, and a hardwood forest that casts cool shade in the shadows of beech and maple trees. Deer peacefully forage in the apple orchard, and a butterfly garden hosts a feast for the gentle winged insects. The herb garden showcases common household herbs such as rosemary alongside oft-forgotten useful plants such as calendula, which pinky swears it goes well in potato soup. The nature center's knowledgeable staff lead educational programs year-round that fill brains with experiences in geocaching, exploring the Grand River, and watching live owl presentations.

A passionate staff of potters and painters oversees brushstrokes at Piece of Mine, which boasts hundreds of paintable items, ranging from mugs to vases to piggy banks, for beginner and veteran maestros. Unlike the antiquated pottery studios of yesteryear, Piece of Mine has done away with the cumbersome slips, molds, and cleaning greenware that bog down the process, affording artists total focus on their work. Sponges and stamps supplement brushes, and nearby design books are full of great art ideas, such as painting a personal Mount Rushmore with your own face four times.

Professional dancer Tiffany Russell's early career saw her gliding across some of the world's most prestigious stages, winning applause with her nimble footwork in productions of My Fair Lady, Guys and Dolls, and The Wizard of Oz. When Tiffany and her family settled in Lansing, she had trouble finding a dance studio with the scheduling flexibility she needed as a parent and the challenge she craved as an artist who trained with the Russian Ballet Academy and the Broadway Dance Center.

She subsequently founded Spartan Dance Center in 2010, where adults with hectic work schedules can shimmy in anytime for drop-in ballroom classes, and kids can find plenty of opportunity to study pirouettes and greco-roman swan wrestling in after-school ballet classes. The center's esteemed chorus line of dance teachers is well-versed in a multitude of performance styles, enabling wide-ranging instruction in dance varieties that include hip-hop, contemporary, and lyrical.