10 After School STEM Program Ideas to Keep Kids Engaged
Looking for ways to build engagement with learners? Are your students looking for activities that interest them? After-school activities and programs are fundamental to student development, but the challenge comes with finding the right activities that will interest your students, relate to learning goals, and are feasible or attainable.
To help you out, here’s 10 ideas for STEM-related or project-based learning (PBL) activities for learners of all ages.
The importance of after-school activity programs
Initiating an after-school activity or starting up a program may require you to make the case for it with administration or the school district. Thankfully, there’s a large body of evidence that out-of-school programs — whether you call them extracurricular or after-school activities — play an extremely important role in increasing learners’ sense of engagement with their school.
That value alone would be reason enough to invest time and resources in developing after-school programs or activities, but the truth is they offer a much wider range of benefits for both learners and schools.
For learners, after-school programs:
- Improve academic performance and attendance by reinforcing and complementing classroom learning or providing academic support
- Aid in social development and promoting social emotional learning by providing safe spaces to form relationships and build teamwork and cooperative skills
- Increase emotional and physical health and safety by creating supervised environments where learners can be physically active and engage in activities that reduce stress
- Support additional learning by enabling students to explore ideas and interests they may not be able to during regular school hours
For schools and districts, out-of-school programs:
- Increase student participation and engagement by building stronger connections between the learners, the school, their families, and their community
- Foster a positive school climate by engaging students in activities they enjoy and can share with others, boosting morale and raising spirits
- Support parents by providing a space and activities for kids to learn and have fun after school, offering more peace of mind for working parents
- Optimize school resources by allowing for more efficient use of facilities and equipment outside of regular school hours, which can also attract more sources of grants or funding
While any out-of-school program or activity will carry some kind of cost, after-school programs can actually provide a significant return-on-investment for communities, with every $1 invested saving at least $3 by:
- Helping to improve academic performance at school
- Reducing the risk of juvenile delinquency
- Building skills that can increase a learner’s future earning potential
Types of after-school program activities
Which type of out-of-school programs or activities you create depends on many different factors, including your school’s location and available resources, the participating grade levels, if they are associated with a particular class or course of study, and (of course) learners’ interests.
Additionally, some of these activities will be one-off projects, which can last as little as a single week or an afternoon. Other activities will be long-term programs, meant to last over an entire summer or semester, or even continue every new school year.
Here are some of the ways you can think of different out-of-school programs:
- Clubs and organizations — Gatherings that provide a space for learners to explore shared interests and hobbies, whether to create individual, single projects or work together toward larger goals
- Drama and theater troupes
- Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) clubs
- Arts and crafts clubs
- Community service organizations
- Sports and fitness — Establishing a space and organized guidance that can support playing games and performing physical activities, either indoors or outdoors, competitively or collaboratively
- Team sports and leagues
- Outdoor activities such as nature walks
- Indoor games and esports
- Dance and martial arts
- Academic enrichment programs — Programs that provide either peer or instructor-led extracurricular academic support, or share interests that relate to the school curriculum
- Peer and/or mentor support
- Book or media clubs
- Coding/robotics/AI programming projects
- Workforce development and support
10 engaging after-school activities for learners
There are hundreds of possible out-of-school activities that can engage learners. As a provider of STEM and project-based learning solutions, we want to provide suggestions that we’re familiar with and know will engage learners.
Here’s our selection of out-of-school STEM-related activities for learners across all grades.
- Paper airplane design challenge (Grades 1–6)
First, here’s a short activity that you can employ either as a quick, one-off activity outside of the classroom or incorporate into a longer after-school project. Making paper airplanes is something we’ve all done in school, but tying it to the engineering design process to make better planes that fly straighter and further helps connect to relevant topics.
Plus, fewer things can engage students than some friendly competition, especially if it’s tied to making cool things. This particular airplane design activity employs advanced physics principles to engage and challenge older students and can be modified to be more appropriate for younger learners.
- Early development robotics club (Grades K–2)
Robotics doesn’t just have to be an interest for older learners. The fundamental concepts are especially helpful for kindergarten and grade 1–2 students because building robots is a hands-on, problem-solving activity that promotes abstract and sequential thinking skills. Plus, who doesn’t love cool, sci-fi robots that inspire the imagination?
There are several approaches you can take to integrate robotics into elementary class lessons. Learning how to code a fun robot project can help students understand other concepts. For example, connect the idea of coding to how they navigate their own space. You could ask them, “What steps do you have to follow to get from the home room to the cafeteria?” Then, ask them to create a simple program using basic commands to help a new student find their way.
- Advanced, competitive robotics clubs (Grades 8–12)
Of course, higher grade levels have the opportunity to further develop their problem-solving and design skills with robotics. Older learners have the established knowledge to address complex systems of mechanics, sensors, and computer programming, as well the ability to utilize their research skills and artistic expression.
Rather than just tying robotics to a single lesson, why not appeal to their sense of competition by applying to official robotics challenges? Entering robotics competitions such as The National Robotics Challenge or the First Robotics Competition offers your learners the chance to test their engineering skills, represent their schools, and even win awards and scholarships.
- After school AI programming (Grades 5–8)
Robotics isn’t the only programming opportunity you have to engage learners. You can get additional use of the school’s computer labs by opening them up during after-school hours for students to play with and learn more about artificial intelligence.
You can introduce learners to AI-powered chatbots to show them how programmers are able to create AI companions that can deliver human-like responses. Once they understand the basic concepts, provide them with hands-on activities and collaborative programming exercises to design AI chatbots that can talk about certain topics or interests.
As a final part of the project, ask learners to experiment with examples such as the Python-drive CodeMonkey Trivia Chatbot course to create their own chatbot that can respond to other users.
- Media and technology clubs (Grades 4–12)
The idea of the AV club may be a bit antiquated but now, more than ever, kids are engaging with media technology. Take the opportunity to build on their interests with groups or clubs that share and study media platforms such TikTok and Twitch and engage with media ranging from viral videos to movies and anime.
This isn’t just passive enjoyment, though. You can direct how they engage with media through discussions, research and even project-based learning assignments:
- Discuss how content creators customize the message and medium for their intended audiences, whether it’s through video logs, movies or podcasting.
- Work as a group to deconstruct media (and develop critical thinking skills) by showing learners how videos are created and marketed.
- Encourage learners to express their feelings and thoughts through short media messages, video clips or even animations they produce.
Have students work together to create their own movie using resources such as the SmartLab Studio.
- Digital art activities (Grades K–12)
As more schools face cuts in arts education, it’s important to find ways to integrate more of the arts into science and technology. STEM with integrated arts (STEAM) doesn’t just have to be an official part of the school’s curriculum, it can be applied to out-of-school activities to teach learners how the arts intersect with more technical subjects, such as through visual communication and principles of design.
Whether it’s a single project to create something for a school event or a year-long club that engages with multiple forms of media, digital arts can be tailored to the skills, abilities, and interests of each grade level. For example, you could have a semester-long extracurricular course that explores color theory, art history, animation, photography, and more through digital tools such as camera phones, computers, tablets, and animation software.
- Amusement park physics day (Grades 6–12)
What better way to engage students in spring or summer than a day at the local amusement park? Many theme or amusement parks have programs to support “physics days,” where students ride the rides to explore the different laws of motion that make amusement park attractions work.
This can be a week- or even month-long project where you introduce learners to the different concepts that inform ride design and safety. You can even ask learners to design the next ride that they think could make a big splash in the amusement park world.
For the actual day at the park, give students assignments to explore math, science, and physics problems they need to solve by observing and riding the mechanics of different attractions. Reach out to your local area amusement park to coordinate and set up details, including special pricing for schools and students. You can find example programs at Six Flags, Lagoon, Cedar Point, Hershey Park, and other major amusement parks.
- Community support and outreach clubs (Grades 4–12)
The “out-of-school” in “out-of-school programs” can be literal when learners help make a difference for their community through volunteering. Help inspire learners that want to do more by creating projects or opportunities where they feel they’re able to have an impact. Some potential examples include:
- Utilizing STEM projects to explore different ways to help people in the community, such as how to build more affordable housing or increase clean water access
- Participate in trail maintenance or other outdoor projects with local parks, nature preserves, or the National Park Service
- Reach out to local museums or preservation societies and coordinate on science-related projects, such as document digitization
Search for online programs, such as Zooniverse, that offer platforms where volunteers can work on their computers to help organizations analyze data, classify images, or contribute to scientific discoveries
- Plan a public project (Grades K–12)
You can also support community outreach through one-off PBL activities. These single projects can be a great way to get learners more involved in the community and help them make a difference. These PBL activities should ask learners to focus on how they could approach solving real-world problems and how to apply the concepts they’ve learned in school.
Public projects can include things such as:
- Creating a community mural
- Fundraising for an animal shelter
- Visiting a retirement home
- Running a food drive for a local food bank
- Taking a field trip with a purpose
- Esports groups (Grades 3–12)
Playing video games is a huge part of daily life for kids and teens, so why not use gaming as a way to reach disengaged students? More school districts are looking at developing their own after-school esports clubs and teams to give learners a space to play and learn social skills such as communication and collaboration.
Start by establishing a vision and set of goals for your school. Will this be friendly, local competition, or is there a possibility of competing on a larger stage against other schools and districts? Then, find ways to leverage the computers and other digital equipment that your school already provides for technical education classes.
STEM labs provide a great space for project-based learning activities, both during and after school. Having the support to evolve with technology, to adapt to school requirements, and to adjust to student learning needs can keep these spaces active and engaging for years to come.
Talk to us about how you can develop a long-term plan for instructor training, equipment support, and content development for STEM and PBL projects, for out-of-school activities and as part of your regular curriculum.
Looking for more samples of out-of-school programming activities? Download these flexible out-of-school PBL + STEM projects for third, fourth, and fifth grade learners:
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