Giving children the option to choose what activities they want to take part in, creates an environment of respect conducive to out-of-school time learning. In my experience children are more willing to take part in and enjoy the activity when it’s something they choose to do, rather than something they feel they have to do.
Be mindful that not every child wants to make a crayon candle or build a balloon rocket even if you spent a lot of time planning and preparing the activity. Interests vary, and choosing to read a book, play pretend school or build a Lincoln log house is a quality options for social development. While you need to offer well structured planned activities, remember that kids also learn through play.
ou may already do this. Pick a topic to plan activities around, for example, Homemade games Week or Space Week. Themes help create quality by allowing you to touch on different interests weekly to ensure you are providing well-rounded lessons in your program. Another benefit of theme weeks is that planning becomes easier. Just go to Pinterest and type in “space theme activities for kids,” you will have hundreds of activities to choose from. I am not saying they are all quality options, but somewhere in the mix are a few good ones. Check out this list of themes for some ideas.
What I mean by purposeful planning is having intention with your lesson. For example, I may feel that the kids in my care would benefit from a week dedicated to teamwork.
I would then seek activities that emphasize teamwork. Now, don’t get me wrong, I would not call the week, “Teamwork week”. The kids would be less inclined to participate if they knew I was trying to get them to be better people (she said joking..kinda) . I would stick to my weekly theme, but look for activities that support teamwork within that theme. Maybe I would create a Space themed scavenger hunt, or break kids into teams for a Space STEM challenge.
Whatever the activity, it would require kids to work together, and if the kids struggle with the teamwork, it would give me an opportunity to help them work through the conflict and build on cooperation skills.
I touched on this a bit with themes, use variety in your lessons to create a well-rounded curriculum. Decide on what you value and what you want your program to represent. I recommend the use of nine content areas I have worked into my lessons. These nine areas are recommended by the School Age Curricular Framework, and I have found that when implemented into my program it created a more encompassing environment. The nine areas include:
Language, literature & Numbers activities includes reading, writing, speaking, thinking critically, self expression, numerical reasoning, and math concepts such as measuring, and basic statistics
Classic Examples include trivia, story telling, card games, debate club and mad libs. For more ideas check out our Language, literature & Numbers activities.
Art & Culture includes crafts, dance, theater, music, visual arts and other types of expression
Classic art & culture ideas for after school programs include creating musical instruments, painting a picture, learning a classic dance such as a waltz or even the cha-cha slide. For more ideas view our art & culture activities.
Global Learning activities encourage kids to investigate of the world, translate ideas into actions to improve global conditions
Examples of global learning activities you can use in your after school lesson plan are activities that promote our similarities and differences like where the wind blows or what makes us different. You can teach kids basic sign language, or a few words in Spanish. If you are working with older kids you can incorporate wider reaching activities that ask kids to examine issues in the world. Click here to see more global learning activities.
Health & Wellness activities includes nurturing of competent, caring and responsible children and youth and promotion of healthy living and well-being
Some examples of health and wellness activities you can use in your after school program include physical fitness challenges and active group games, healthy food projects like astronaut food or dinosaur eggs.
Environmental Learning – Increase knowledge and awareness about the environment and associated challenges to foster attitudes, motivation, and commitments
Examples of environmental learning activities that you can use when creating your lesson plan for school age kids include, building bird houses, creating a compost program and going on nature hikes. Click here to see more environmental learning activities for kids.
Media & Technology include exploration and appropriate use of media, building and strengthening children’s ability to make good choices in their daily use of media and technology.
Some ways you can incorporate media & technology into your after school lesson plans is by have kids create a healthy use of technology poster, make a movie, have an internet trivia race where kid race to find the answer to tough questions.
Social Emotional Development – Integrate character education and social-emotional development to reinforce core ethical values of respect, responsibility and citizenship
Integrate social and emotional activities into your after school lesson plan through games like, emotional charades that promotes awareness of emotions. Gratitude tap is another game that promotes social awareness and self esteem. Click here to see more great social emotional development games. If you are interested in reading more about supporting social and emotional development in after school programs. View my article Social Emotional Growth in Child Care.
STEM – Include Science Technology Engineering and Math activities that promote critical thinking and problem solving.
Bulk up your lesson plans with STEM activities like, an egg drop, building a kite, or a one of a kind Rube Goldberg Machine. Click here to see more awesome STEM activities.
Service Learning/Community Building – Increase knowledge and skills while making positive contributions to the world
Some service learning examples are to create kindness rocks for your community or make busy boxes for the children’s hospital. You can also simply hold a food drive, or a car wash. Click here to see more service learning activities you can incorporate into your lesson plans.
I use some of these a lot more than others but I try to work each content area into my lessons at least once a month. You need to decide what your core content areas are, and then develop your plan for delivering that content.
As you can see, instead of using a time of day plan I kept the times open-ended and list the specific activities. There are three listed categories per day. The categories are Academic Activities, Large Group Activities & Active Games/Physical Fitness.
This is the time of day I offer homework help and snack. Although these are the focus of the first portion of our day we also offer an academic activity. Often it is a STEM, environmental learning, reading or math activity. I make this the “academic activity” because I do not want it to take away from kids eating or getting homework done, which of course is priority number one.
This is the time of day I offer traditional after school craft, cooking project, computer time, or social game. In my program this is the largest chunk of time in the day. I offer a free choice program so children are not required to take part in any activity; they are free to utilize other interest areas in our program if the large group activity does not interest them.
The active game & fitness time chunk is outdoor or gym time. We plan a daily game for the children to play. As I mentioned before, we are a free choice program, however; I do make children take part in the group game for a minimum of five minutes before deciding to sit out. (They usually end up playing, and forget that they wanted to sit out in the first place) Now that you understand the structure of our day let’s move on to activity type.
You will see at the top of the lesson plan is an activity type legend, the nine categories listed there correspond with the content areas I utilize in my programming.
This allows me to hold myself accountable in creating a well-rounded curriculum. If I want to offer all nine content areas in a month and I have not yet offered a service learning activity, I can put down a SL (service learning) in the activity box for large group activity on Thursday, then when I am planning I know what kind of activity I am looking for. This activity type is also useful for parents, they may not know what Drops on a penny means, but they can look and see that their child will have the option to participate in a STEM activity that day.
The outcome section is where I can write what the desired outcome of the activity will be. This is the purposeful planning piece. When I plan that Space STEM challenge, I would write, “develop critical thinking and teamwork skills” in the outcome section of the lesson. This, like the activity type, can be done first to help you create that purposeful well-rounded curriculum.
Below is a Spy Week sample lesson plan, so you can get a visual understanding of a quality lesson plan. (All the items on this plan are available on this site. Search them to see how to run each activity!) Click here for a free printable Word template or click here for a free printable PDF version of my template. I hope that my insight has helped you in your desire to bring a quality lesson plan to the children you serve.
