Youth & Teens

Exploring the outdoors is a multisensory activity with many long-term benefits. It builds your child’s creativity, reduces anxiety, improves attention span and develops problem solving and leadership skills, to name just a few benefits. Your MetroParks offer a safe haven for discovery, where your child can be naturally happy and set a life course for curiosity, learning and growing.

Top Picks for Youth & Teens

Conservation Kids

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Programs are designed in a series that take children on adventures from discovering nature to protecting it, giving them clear steps to take and opportunities to see the impact. Children and their adult companions will plant for pollinators, collect seeds to plant a forest, create their own wildlife habitat, serve as a naturalist for their classmates, help protect and promote wildlife, and so much more!

MoMBA Tot Track and Beginner/Skills Trail

4485 Union Rd., Dayton, OH 45424 Directions >

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These two trails provide a natural-surface riding experience that helps build the skill needed to ride single-track mountain bike trails. The Tot Track is specifically designed for Balance Bikes, with a packed crushed stone surface and just the right flow to help new riders gain confidence. The Beginner/Skills trail has wide rolling hills with optional features to build skills useful on more difficult single-track trails.

Carriage Hill Riding Center

8111 E. Shull Rd., Dayton, OH 45424 Directions >

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Carriage Hill MetroPark Riding Center is a public horseback riding facility that offers horseback riding activities for beginner through intermediate riders focusing on safety, balanced position and proper horsemanship. We offer English riding lessons, youth camps, trail rides and pony rides. The Riding Center has more than 20 horses representing a variety of breeds, one outdoor arena, one indoor arena with an observation area and access to 7.8 miles of horse trails.

Adventure Central

2222 N. James H. McGee Blvd., Dayton, OH 45427 Directions >

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Adventure Central at Wesleyan MetroPark is an education center for youth ages 5-18. Adventure Central provides youth in West Dayton with after-school programs, activity nights and day and overnight camps; it also offers parent and family programs. Through this innovative partnership of Five Rivers MetroParks, Ohio State University Extension and 4-H, participants connect with nature in a positive way, becoming the creating, caring, capable and contributing citizens of tomorrow.

MetroParks Ice Rink

237 E. Monument Ave., Dayton, OH 45402 Directions >

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Grab your mittens and hit the ice! Sheltered under the covered pavilion, the MetroParks Ice Rink offers an extended skating season each year from the day after Thanksgiving through February. Music theme nights on Fridays and Saturdays are popular with youth and teens. See the calendar for ice skating lesson schedules.

Activities

MetroParks has a long history of helping kids of all ages experience and appreciate nature. Studies have shown that if our youth are given more opportunities to have meaningful experiences outdoors, they will be more likely to value and engage with nature and feel empowered to protect it. Try some of these activities to encourage more outdoor time:

Programs & Events

Watch our program schedule or click the links below for these programs & events designed specifically for youth and teens:

Programs & Events

Create a Green Schoolyard

Get your school growing

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Create a natural or garden space at your school so you can get outside all the time without needed to plan a field trip! Green schoolyards enrich your school grounds and use them to improve children’s well-being, learning and play while promoting community engagement and contributing to the ecological health and resilience of our region.

Learn more about how you can get one started at your school.

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