A-Z Things to Do Around and About Alpharetta

Veterans Park at the Atlanta History Center is dedicated to all of the men and women who have served – and continue to serve – the United States of America.  The Park was designed not as a traditional veterans’ memorial, but as a unique gathering place encouraging reflection, personal connections to veterans, and a celebration of the lives of those who have sacrificed to secure our freedom.

Autrey Mill Nature Preserve & Heritage Center

Check out their Children’s Classes and Workshops, Cooking and Crafts, After School Explorer and more!
Preserve Hours: Mon-Sun, 8a-Dusk
Visitor Center Hours: Tue-Sat, 10a-4p, Sun, 12p-4p & Mon closed

Center for Puppetry Arts

January 21 – March 8 Stellaluna  “How can we be so different and feel so much alike? And how we can feel so different and be so much alike?” These questions are at the heart of the best-selling book, Stellaluna, by author and illustrator, Janell Cannon. Notions of diversity and inclusion explored in the book inspired Center for Puppetry Arts Artistic Director Jon Ludwig to bring this story to the stage. “It’s a classic story of finding one’s place in the world and accepting others for what and who they are” says Ludwig. With birds and bats as the central protagonists in the story, the book is perfectly suited to be adapted for the puppet theater.”

The result is a cast of bird and bat rod puppets that will be manipulated using overt puppetry, a puppetry style in which the puppeteers are fully visible. They will be performed on a set that is larger than any production ever seen before at the Center. Scenic Designer F. Elaine Williams is pushing the physical boundaries of the Mainstage Theater at the Center to create a spectacular world for Stellaluna.  Lighting by Liz Lee, original music by Dolph Amick, costumes by Erik Teague and sound by Gregory Montague round out the artistic team assembled by Ludwig to create this new production for the Center.

Continuing a collaborative tradition of working in and with schools to create new works (an initiative started in 2015), Ludwig and Center for Puppetry Arts Education Director Aretta Baumgartner will visit Atlanta Public Schools’ Burgess-Peterson Academy five times between September of 2019 and March of 2020. These visits empower students to explore the characters and themes in Stellaluna though creative dramatics, visual art, music, puppetry, reading and reflection activities. The reactions of the students to the material offers the Center’s artistic team valuable insights into what resonates with the students and why the story relevant in their lives. This information is then actively incorporated into the design and development of the production.

On February 2, Girl Scouts are invited to join the Center for Puppetry Arts for a celebration of puppetry and STEM! A special post-show Scouts-only presentation will make Science connections with the show and reveal the Technology behind the performances (including the computers, lights and sound systems we use to create our puppetry magic). A guided tour in the Worlds of Puppetry Museum will highlight the Engineering behind the Jim Henson puppets and puppetry traditions from across the world, and a customized Create-A-Puppet Workshop™ will celebrate the Math applications utilized in making a one-of-a-kind puppet (shapes, angles, measuring, symmetry, fractions).  This activity is for Girl Scouts only and information is available at the Ticket Sales Office.

As part of the Center’s sensory-friendly initiative for visitors with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Sensory-Friendly Sunday for Stellaluna will be presented on Sunday, February 16 from noon to 5 p.m. This special afternoon will allow guests with ASD to experience programming in a comfortable and safe setting with staff members who have been trained in interactions with patrons with ASD.  Modifications and resources include a quiet zone, light and sound adjustments, fidget toys, sound-reducing headphones, sunglasses, and social stories.

Recommended for ages four and up, Stellaluna will be presented in the Mainstage Theater, January 21-March 8.

Reduced-price previews take place Tuesday Jan 21 and 22 at 10 a.m. and noon.  The regular show schedule is as follows:

January 21-26
Tuesday – Wednesday: 10 a.m. and noon
Thurs – Friday: 10 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Saturday: 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Sunday: 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.

January 28-March 8
Tuesday – Friday: 10 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.
Saturday: 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Sunday: 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.

All-inclusive ticket prices vary but start at $19.50 (members) and $25 (nonmembers) and include entrance to the Create-A Puppet Workshop™, where guests can make, decorate and perform with their own Stellaluna Rod & String Puppet, as well as admission to the Worlds of Puppetry Museum, featuring the world’s largest collection of Jim Henson puppets and one of the country’s largest collections of global puppets. Tickets can be purchased online at puppet.org or by calling 404.873.3391.

Chattahoochee Nature Center

Children’s Museum of Atlanta

PNC Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation and CareSource fund kindness-themed day of learning

Turtle Power through May 10 After more than three decades of battling evil and exemplifying teamwork, the beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) will appear in an exhibit for children and families to enjoy at Children’s Museum of Atlanta. The four funny “heroes in a half shell” will share life lessons and team-building skills with their crime-fighting tactics in Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™: Secrets of the Sewer™ opening Jan. 18, 2020 in Atlanta.

In the exhibit, families will be transported to the underground home of the crime-fighting heroes to see what really happens in their secret hideaway. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles brothers Leonardo (the tactical, courageous leader in blue), Michelangelo (the free-spirited jokester in orange), Raphael (the aggressive tough guy in red) and Donatello (the scientist and technological genius in purple) invite families to their New York City sewer lair to train together and learn about the Turtles’ comedic, skillful strategies.

The Turtles are known and respected for their teamwork. As the TMNT’s sensei and adoptive father Splinter often tells them, “Together there is nothing you cannot accomplish.” Through team-building challenges, collaborative games and mind-teasing puzzles, families and friends will learn skills to help them successfully work together. A few examples include:

• Building a “bridge” together and thinking creatively as a team to overcome challenges.

• Working together to fling pizza disks at arcade style targets using a ninja-powered pizza shooter.

• Planning ahead and using patience to navigate the rope maze.

• Practicing ninja speed while playing a dexterity-based reaction time game.

• Creating a sewer pipe together and seeing where it goes.

February: Children’s Museum of Atlanta will honor some of the nation’s greatest heroes with a variety of fun and educational activities all month long. Little ones can board the Peach State Flyer steam train to learn about the way African Americans helped shape history; discover Chinese culture with the Atlanta Chinese Dance Company; unearth the magic of National Tell a Fairy Tale Day and more! Kiddos will also have the opportunity to roam the sewers of New York City for a multitude of crime-fighting adventures alongside the “heroes in a half-shell” at the Museum’s traveling experience, Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ™: Secrets of the Sewer!™

February Special Programming:

Black History Month
Wednesday, February 1 – Friday, February 29 (Except February 2, 5, 11, 14, 17, 22 and 23)
Children and families are invited to learn about prominent, historical figures through various activities as the Museum celebrates Black History Month. Visitors can join the Imaginators as they perform an original mini-musical, Peach State Flyer, or visit the Science Bar, Art Studio and Build It Lab to learn about the notable contributions that African Americans have made to science, technology, engineering and art.

Chinese New Year
Sunday, February 2
The Atlanta Chinese Dance Company is coming to the Museum to ring in The Year of the Rat! Founded in 1991, the Company entertains and educates audiences about Chinese history and culture through traditional dancing. Little ones will also have the opportunity to enjoy themed Music & Movement and Storytime programs. The day will finish off with a special craft in the Art Studio.

Family Free Day
Wednesday, February 5 (Session 1: 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.; Session 2: 1-3:30 p.m.; Session 3: 4-6:30 p.m.)
Atlantans are invited to visit the Museum free of charge during Family Free Day. Throughout the day, kids will be introduced to different activities centered around kindness. Made possible by the support of the PNC Foundation, The Coca-Cola Foundation and CareSource, the three sessions will offer the chance for kids to explore the Museum’s six permanent, interactive exhibits as well as the new feature exhibit, Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ™: Secrets of the Sewer!™. *Free tickets must be reserved in advance. Limited capacity. For more information, please visit childrensmuseumatlanta.org/familyfreeday.*

Valentine’s Day
Friday, February 14
Love is in the air! Kids are encouraged to spread the messages of Valentine’s Day by creating a one-of-a-kind craft to share with family members and loved ones. The celebration will continue with a special reading of a story about kindness, happiness, Valentine’s Day-themed Music & Movement, a special science show and activities in the Built It Lab.

Presidents’ Day
Monday, February 17
Children’s Museum of Atlanta welcomes little ones and their caretakers for an exceptional Presidents’ Day celebration. Guests can enjoy presidential treatment with special programming about the Oval Office and themed Storytime and Music & Movement programs.

National Tell a Fairy Tale Day
Saturday, February 22 – Sunday, February 23
An enchanting day of fantasy, lore and education awaits families who visit the Museum! Little ones can explore their wildest imaginations with special activities such as Fairy Tale-themed Reader’s Theatre, Music & Movement and Storytime. The magic will continue throughout the day with whimsical crafts in the Art Studio and a spectacular Science Show.

Let’s Move in Libraries
Saturday, February 29
Guests can enjoy a Storytime and Movement program presented by Fulton County Library System as a part of the Let’s Move in Libraries international initiative. The fun will continue with a mini musical performance of Peach State Flyer by the Imaginators, crafts in the Art Studio and opportunities to learn about the innovative contributions African Americans have made to science, technology, engineering and art in both the Built It Lab and Science Bar.

Feature Exhibit: Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ™: Secrets of the Sewer™
Saturday, January 18 – Sunday, May 10
Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles™: Secrets of the Sewer will transport kiddos on an adventure to the underground home of the four funny “heroes in a half-shell” to explore cooperation skills, life lessons and master the brother’s crime-fighting tactics. Through team-building challenges, games and mind-teasing puzzles – all set in the ninja turtles’ secret hideaway, little ones will learn the power of working together to conquer the villains of New York City!

Building Blocks: Early Learning Programs

Tiny Club Monday
10:30 am.
Kiddos can choose between TiNY Science Club and TiNY Artist Club to enjoy a 30-minute class designed especially for kids ages two to five and their caregivers. Families can also check out TiNY Builder Club, a drop-in class held from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Each program will be themed around the book of the month, Patrice Karst’s The Invisible String, and offer hands-on activities, professional instruction and the chance to learn something new!

Messy Thursdays
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Little visitors and guardians are invited to get messy! Messy Thursdays offer slime, finger painting, new sensory activities and more every Thursday of the month! Let the Children’s Museum of Atlanta clean up the mess while the little ones have a blast with new activities and endless opportunities to try each and every week.

Friday Jam Session
10:30 a.m.- 12:30 p.m.
Rock and roll into the weekend with this high energy, music-filled class guaranteed to shake out the wiggles and foster a love of music. Each week’s program offers new songs, instrument play and of course, dance breaks.

Consolidated Gold Mine  Dahlonega 

Largest gold mine east of the Mississippi. Travel 200 feet underground and hear tales of miner’s struggles to uncover gold deep within large quartz veins. Your tour guide welcomes interaction from the group as you experience life as a miner at the turn-of-the-century.  They also offer gemstone mining – find colorful gems in every bucket!

Dave & Busters Alpharetta

Come and play at Dave & Buster’s newest location in Alpharetta ~ the one and only place you can enjoy great food and play hundreds of awesome arcade games! The restaurant’s mouth-watering, chef-crafted menu and beverage items, combined with the latest games and attractions provide the perfect setting for kids parties, corporate and group events.  Guests can play more than 150 of the latest games including the Walking Dead, Tailgate Toss and Justice League!

Fernbank Museum of Natural History

OUR SENSES: AN IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE

Opens at Fernbank Museum on February 8

 Riveting New Exhibit Includes Interactive Experiences that Reveal

How our Brains Make Sense of the World

In the highly experiential exhibition Our Senses: An Immersive Experience,Fernbank Museum presents a series of funhouse-like experiences that dare visitors to rely on their senses—and then reveal how and why what they perceive may not actually be what’s happening. Inspired by extraordinary diversity of sensory “super powers,” Our Senses invites children and adults alike to play with color, patterns, sounds, scents and textures to explore the science of our senses from Feb. 8 through May 3, 2020.

Visitors can experience interactive spaces designed to test perceptions and illuminate the complex relationships between sensing and perceiving. Guests are presented with an intriguing proposition that the five senses we most commonly know are not the full story; human sensory perceptions may seem like windows into the outside world, but actual perceptions are created in the brain. Every sight, sound, smell, taste and touch is detected by specialized sense systems that send signals to the brain. The brain then decodes signals into perceptions through detecting, selecting, correcting and balancing to influence the experience of “reality.” Not to be outdone, our inner senses, like hunger, thirst and tiredness, detect what our bodies need and team up with our outer senses, like vision, hearing and smell, to find things in the world that our bodies need to stay alive.

Throughout the exhibit, guests can put their senses to the test as they encounter challenges, interactions and technologies that help “make sense of their senses” while revealing the secret sights, sounds and smells that only other species know.

Interactive experiences include:

• Shine a white light on colorful decorated walls to reveal hidden images that show how different the world can appear when illuminated in white, blue, green, or red.
• Analyze an audio collage to track individual sounds, such as an individual instrument within an orchestra.
• Explore a garden through the eyes of a bee or a butterfly, where flowers appear like enormous targets, with ultraviolet marks that identify a meal.
• Use an infrared viewer to hunt like a snake using heat to detect prey.
• Dial into animal sounds normally outside the range of human hearing—including the calls of a whale, elephant, mouse and bat.
• See with your brain as you experience how you are able to interpret incomplete or inconclusive imagery.
• Discover what happens when your senses disagree in a balancing test, where your feet feel a flat floor but youreyes see curves, dips and ripples.
• Get hands-on in a touch zone that engages multiple types of nerve endings to feel different patterns, temperatures and textures.
• Sniff out fragrance notes to identify individual scents in a symphony of smells.
• Test a computer’s learning abilities by arranging puzzle-like pieces to create pictures then challenge the computer to get better at guessing what they are.
• Participate in a live show that explores why humans have senses and what’s unique about human perception (show times are limited and will be posted in exhibit)

“This highly immersive exhibit really showcases the senses, including how humans and other species simply could not survive without them–or the brain that decodes and processes the sensory information,” said Dr. Bobbi Hohmann, Vice President of Programming and Collections. “With the human drive for exploration and discovery, we have also been able to extend our senses and expand our abilities with technological innovations like microscopes, x-rays and ultrasonic sound waves. Guests will discover how these and other advancements have allowed humans to explore our world beyond the biological senses to make new discoveries.”

Our Senses is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York (amnh.org).Our Senses: An Immersive Experience is on view at Fernbank from Feb. 8-May 3, 2020. Tickets are included with general museum admission: $20 for adults, $19 for seniors, $18 for children ages 3-12 (no charge for ages 2 and under), and free for Fernbank members.

BACK FROM THE BRINK: SAVED FROM EXTINCTION

 New Giant Screen Film, Narrated by Claire Danes, Brings Amazing True Wildlife Comeback Stories to Life in 3D at Fernbank’s Giant Screen Theater

 BACK FROM THE BRINK: SAVED FROM EXTINCTION, a stunning new 3D Giant Screen film adventure narrated by Claire Danes, captures remarkable comeback stories of endangered species from around the world—which are rebounding thanks to human efforts to save them. The film opens at Fernbank Museum’s Giant Screen Theater on January 17, 2020.

Filmed on location in three unique regions around the globe, BACK FROM THE BRINK 3D uses the immersive giant screen format to plunge audiences into a wild world of breathtaking natural beauty and captivating wildlife behavior. Through a spectacular 3D experience, the film brings to life the amazing true story of three animal species whose numbers recently dwindled to near extinction, but were rescued from the brink, including California’s enchanting Channel Island Fox, China’s fabled Golden Monkey, and the wondrous migrating giant Red Crabs of Christmas Island, off the coast of Australia. The film also introduces people around the world—scientists, researchers, park rangers and students—who are working passionately to preserve these endangered species.

CHANNEL ISLAND FOX

Audiences discover how California’s enchanting Channel Island Fox has been rescued from an invasion of predatory Golden Eagles. In the fastest recovery of a species in the history of animal conservation, scientists helped solve the mystery of the fox population’s severely diminishing numbers and devised and executed an ingenious plan to save them—which included returning an iconic raptor, the American Bald Eagle—to the island to restore the ecology’s balance. Fox numbers have since rebounded from less than 100 into the thousands, allowing them to be removed from The Endangered Species List.

GOLDEN MONKEY

In the fabled mountains of China’s Yunnan Province, the film follows one of the world’s most endangered primates, the Golden Monkey—a creature so elusive it had never been photographed until the 1970s. Hunted nearly to extinction, this mythical society of primates was on the verge of collapse, numbering about 1500, when the efforts of one intrepid researcher changed everything. The revelations convinced the Chinese government to turn the region into one of the country’s first nature preserves. Now, the one-time hunters are becoming park rangers and are the biggest champions and protectors of the monkeys. In just a few decades, the population has gone from near extinction to more than 3,000.

CHRISTMAS ISLAND RED CRABS

Audiences can also witness the wondrous migration of the Red Crabs of Christmas Island and marvel at their recovery from a Crazy Yellow Ant infestation in one of the most successful bio-control experiments ever undertaken. The intruder ants arrived as a few stowaways on cargo ships—but swarmed into an invasion horde numbering several billion, which became a super colony that threatened the entire web of life on the island—especially the red crabs. In a daring experiment, Malaysian micro-wasps were imported and hoisted into the treetop canopy on makeshift elevators to counter balance the ant infestation. Dazzling giant screen filmmaking vividly captures the insect warfare being played out on a grand scale, as well as the red crab hatchlings emerging by the millions.

Ultimately, the film aims to engage and inspire audiences to take action and connect with nature. BACK FROM THE BRINK 3D shows that positive change is possible. Problems created by humans can be solved by humans.

TICKETS

BACK FROM THE BRINK 3D shows at Fernbank from January 17-April 30, 2020 in the Rankin M. Smith, Sr. Giant Screen Theater. 3D Movie tickets are $13 for adults, $12 for seniors, $11 for children ages 3-12, and $8 for Fernbank members. Discounted movie tickets are available with a Value Pass, which also includes museum admission. Fernbank is located at 767 Clifton Road NE in Atlanta.

Margaritaville at Lanier Islands