Top Educational Family Fun Venues: Greenville, SC (KABOOM Award Winners)

Best Indoor Fun: Finalist
Best Field Trip: Finalist
Best Family Membership: Finalist
Best Educational Fun: Finalist

The Children’s Museum of the Upstate in downtown Greenville offers 80,000 square feet dedicated to play-based learning. It’s the 7th largest children’s museum in the country and offers programming, events, birthday parties, field trips and an on-site retail store.

Best Family Membership – First Place
Best Date Night Activity- First Place
Best Playground- First Place
Best Educational Fun – Finalist 
Best Indoor Fun – Finalist
Best Field Trip – Finalist

Roper Mountain is the place to bring your families for a hands-on and engaging experience whether it’s during the school year for field trips or during the summer for Summer Adventure and Summer Camps. Just ask other families in the area about their experiences and you’ll see why Roper Mountain continues to be a “must-see” experience in the upstate and beyond.

The beautiful 62-acre campus contains an array of state-of-the-art educational facilities including a Planetarium and Observatory, Marine and Ecology labs, a Rainforest, a Living History Farm, Dinosaur Adventure trail and a new Environmental Science and Sustainability Center.

Families can attend numerous events throughout the year including Friday Starry Nights, Afternoon Explorations, Summer Adventure, Laser Days of Summer, Summer Exploration Camps, and seasonal holiday laser shows. Regardless of age, you’ll surely find a plethora of engaging activities and fun for everyone to enjoy.

Best Educational Fun: Finalist

Best Field Trip: Finalist

Challenge Island is a local educational franchise that offers STEM enrichment programs such as in-school field trips, summer camps, after-school enrichment, Girl Scout workshops, and more! Our classes offer electronics-free STEAM lessons, but more importantly the kids go through a process- one that takes them through the process of building & designing, and many times learning how to fail & fix it, then testing it again.

Our classes also teach our kids how to work together- how to be a listener as well as how to be a follower. The more opportunities that kids are given to use these skills, the better prepared they will be for the real world, and Challenge Island is a great option for this to happen!

Best Family Theatre: First Place
Best Educational Fun: Finalist

Greenville Shakespeare Company is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide the Upstate of South Carolina and surrounding areas with laugh-out-loud, family-friendly, high-quality, accessible productions of Shakespeare and other classic works of literature. Catch our 25th Anniversary production of Twelfth Night, coming summer 2025!

Don’t take our word for it! Audiences say:

“It. Was. So. Good.” ∙ “Thanks for being our go-to for Shakespeare.” ∙ “Stellar show”!” ∙ “BEST SHAKESPEARE IN THE STATE!”∙“Summer Shakespeare never disappoints.” ∙ “I was all ready not to understand, but when it started, I followed right along!” ∙ “I loved the simplicity of the set design—so fun!” ∙ “This was my first Shakespeare play—and I’m hooked.”