2025 Kill Devil Hills Educational Activities Guide

Atlantic Dance has been teaching kids dance on the Outer Banks since 1995. Atlantic Dance offers classes in tap, jazz, hip hop and lyrical with a primary concentration in classical ballet. At Atlantic Dance, little girls learn grace and achieve development through music and dance. Ballet introduces girls to poise and self confidence and encourages creativity and discipline.

Dare County Family Recreation Park, or Rec Park, serves as the county’s focal point for youth and adult activities. The park features tennis courts, baseball and soccer fields and a playground. Swings, slides, a climbing wall and a covered picnic pavilion are available at the playground and nearby are a tennis practice wall and two batting cages. Also at the site are temperature-controlled press boxes, a concession stand and restrooms.Dare County Youth Center, located at Rec Park, serves the community as a safe after-school destination for middle and high-school students and offers many organized programs for youth and adults as well. In addition to soccer and baseball, other sports programs it hosts are gymnastics, football, ultimate frisbee, lacrosse, softball, fishing, surfing and volleyball. The Northern Beach division of the Youth Center also co-sponors a number of teaching camps and activities in archery, etiquette, golf, music and the arts - along with sailing and other water sports - to name only a few.Family Recreation Park is located behind Outer Banks Brewing Station and is within walking distance of the Kill Devil Hills Library and Post Office, the Baum Center and Kill Devil Hills Cooperative Gallery, which also offers arts and craft classes for kids. It’s also near both First Flight Middle and First Fligh High School.

You might not know that the Outer Banks has a robust arts community. KDH Cooperative is an artist-operated gallery featuring works of local artists across the Outer Banks. Membership of KDH Cooperative includes artists of diverse backgrounds. Art work represented by KDH Cooperative includes oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastels, photography, ceramics, jewelry, fibers, collage, wood, pottery, glass, mosaic and metal.  

Open since 2002, the Outer Banks Arboretum and Teaching Garden was created to provide the community with horticultural education, to help with property enhancement and also as a memorial acknowledgement. The Garden is located next to the Baum Center in Kill Devil Hills - also near the Kill Devil Hills Library and behind the KDH Post Office. It’s a small, quiet and secluded area with a brick pathway that winds through the aquatic, dune and butterfly sections that make up the garden. Besides providing locals and visitors a place of relaxation and visual beauty, the goal of the garden is to test and display labeled plantings and to investigate and showcase planting practices that are most suitable for the Outer Banks’ coastal climate. Featured at the garden are a number of salt- and pest-resistant native plants that are able to thrive in this area despite its often challenging, coastal microclimates of beach dunes, wetlands and maritime forests.The Arboretum and Teaching Garden was founded through collaborative efforts of Dare County’s NC Cooperative Extension Service, Extension Master Gardeners and the Dare Master Gardener Volunteer Association (MGVA). Among the project's partners are Outer Banks Community Foundation, the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau and the Town of Kill Devil Hills. The Dunes of Dare Garden Club maintains the Butterfly Garden. Dare MGVA, along with private contributions and memorials and community grants, fund the Garden.

Sail the Outer Banks (formerly Outer Banks Sailing Academy) offers professional sailing instruction operating under the standards of the American Sailing Association. They offer lessons in Kill Devil Hills. The Academy presents an array of classes including a youth sailing program, a teen program utilizing the Olympic Class 420s, and adult programs for sailors of all levels. The courses are designed to lend confidence, are unrushed and carefully spread over three or four days.