Ideas for an after school club

[boxingtoast]

I work in a very small, private primary school. They are looking into starting some after school activities, and all the staff have been asked if we have any ideas of clubs we would like to run. It would be once a week, about 1.5 hours, ages range from 6-10, and would need to accommodate potentially (although unlikely) about 20 children. It would probably be in blocks, so a club would run for eg 6 or 12 weeks, and then it would stop and someone else would run a different club.
I like doing loads of things, so potentially could do anything, but I am looking for ideas on what to offer and how to go about it. So for example Lego club sounds great, but I don't think just offering Lego to play with once a week would be interesting enough for everyone? I'd be interested in hearing what ideas have worked well and how the clubs are structured over a period of weeks etc.
Many thanks!

How about a board games club. Chess, group games like Monopoly, paired games like Othello.
There are so many games out there and in my experience children love them.
For the younger ones there are games like Cat or Dog bingo which my granddaughter loved to play. Also card games, Top trumps, UNO etc.
Have some quick and easy to learn games and have buddies or those that can play teach those who don’t. Definitely don’t have what I call traditional educational games as they may well encounter them in class.
A random one my grandchildren enjoy is Backgammon.

Lego clubs usualky have challenges each week.

Cooking - making something healthy each week so they can eventually good dinner for the family at home?
sewing or embroidery.
paint by numbers
paper mache
a language ideally if you know one
social skills games like the socially speaking game

Thinking back to my private junior and we did after school sessions in pottery (made piggy banks, plant pots and a large chess piece that was on display in the entrance one year) - coil rather than wheel obvs. We did a lot of art! Another memorable one was making a collage of our houses with fabric. We did a cross stitch of our mother's initial, which was framed in card as a nice mothers day card. We had the head reading a book to us each week as well which was nice - got through Heidi and various others. I think for kids who are overwhelmed with the day that is a nice way to calm and also encourage reading. If parents are too busy to do it themselves it should also have an impact on literacy and vocab. I was a boarder from 6 and we used to really look forward to the book night.

DD's state primary had a lego table, art table, TV on where they would vote for a DVD and a reading corner which seemed to work well with one adult reading a chapter or two and then they'd find a book to read solo.
Hope that helps!

https://www.intofilm.org/clubs Film clubs are great but I’m not sure how it works for a private school- it’s free for state schools to join this

Chess club. I ran this at my primary. There’s various ways to learn - you can start with king and pawns only and add pieces. Could also have a ladder where people play against each other and chess problems (eg checkmate in one etc)

Art club seems very popular at our school, they produce a different piece of art every week. Science club is always fully booked, they do hands on science experiments and all really enjoy it!

Lego club could be construction club so it’s lego, mobilo etc. and/or have different weekly challenges.
Arts and crafts - can literally be anything arty and changes every week so friendship bracelets, scratch art.
Pottery is very popular.
Multi sports in the playground.
Musical theatre so learning a song and a dance from a particular musical then performing at the end of the half term.

In our private primary they have clubs for street dance, pottery, cooking, circus skills, art, film making, animation, science, debate, football, drama, chess, pottery. I think it would be quite expensive to keep changing the club unless you already have the resources, because they all need some resources to start with which has an initial cost, and you need enough of it for 20 dcs at a time (eg 10 chess sets for 20 dcs). Our cooking club is limited to only 7 dcs as it's hard to supervise more dcs safely (perhaps could be more if they only do food prep and not go near the cooker).

Our clubs are 1 hour - I think 1.5 hours is quite long for a focused activity, especially after a school day (OK for more open ended things like art or lego).

Why don't you think a lego club would be popular? I think it would be the most popular. There's more to it than just 'play with lego' - you can have a theme of the week, individual challenges, group challenges, some things where the kids can rifle through the whole lot of lego and some where you give each child a coffee-cup scoop of random pieces and see what they can make.

If the school has grounds that could be used for this you coukd do a gardening club?

If you can get the tech, a stop-motion animation club would be popular - you need art materials for making backdrops, plasticine or toys for being characters, and devices to take the photos and run them together as short films. Across a 12 week block at 1.5hrs per week a child can make a basic but fun short narrative.

The most popular club at my DC’s primary is Lego Robotics. It’s run by private providers who come into the school though, and I think the kit is quite expensive - they control the robots after they’ve built them with an app in a tablet I think?

Other popular clubs are history club (mainly watching movies, dressing up and writing about history things), film club (though parents are a bit torn about paying for the kids to sit round watching movies!), table tennis club, sewing club (they use those easy kits to make a felt animal), art club, nature club (seems to mainly involve wandering around looking at leaves and bugs, but also some microscope stuff).

My children’s primary run lots of clubs - the most popular by far is Lego. Followed by arts and crafts. And the usual mix of sports clubs

I ran a Lego club for years, covering ages from years 1 to 4 over different terms. Even though I used to give them challenges they mostly wanted to do their own builds. Other clubs running on the same nights were sporty ones so I’d get the non-sporty children. It was great for them to develop social skills (particularly sharing and negotiating over pieces) as well as for imagination and creativity.
I’ve also done mindful art which was very popular and quite easy to resource.

Lego clubs are always popular.
You can do challenges (speed builds, build a specific object) or just free build.
Believe me - children LOVE doing anything with Lego.
Board Game club definitely. Classic games like Connect 4, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Frustration etc.
If you can get some of the giant versions of things like Connect 4 it can make it more interesting.
Could you purchase some of the smaller versions of snooker, fuseball, table top hockey etc.
Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh/Lornica club. It's not just collecting the cards - there is an actual game.
Jewellery making - bracelets with beads, friendship bracelets etc.
Older children in years 5 and 6 might enjoy a book club (read a book, discuss it).
Craft club - simple sewing, knitting, crochet.
Comic Club - making a comic together and at the end it can be printed and copies sold.

Lego clubs aren't just about being given a pile of lego to play with (although that can be an option). Often they're STEM based, like following instructions to build a car or creature and using software to make it follow instructions you programme (e.g. move forward 4 squares, stop, turn left one square etc).

Art/craft/pottery clubs are often popular, as is cooking club.

Thank you for all these suggestions. I absolutely do think a Lego club would be popular, I was just wondering what it would consist of apart from just "here's a box of Lego, go for it!" (although that obviously is an option too - we love Lego in our house, can happily spend hours just playing with it).
I think having a build challenge each week, for those who want to try, is a great idea.
And something art/craft based would also work well, as long as it didn't need too much prep. Maybe do a theme? eg crafting animals for 6 weeks, and then change it to something else for the next run?
It needs to be something engaging, but also - as a pp pointed out - it should be relaxing and fun after a day of learning.

Apart from the sporty offerings, DCs school has

Chess & board games
Gardening (forest school in winter)
Art (they do a different medium each week, so paint one week and e.g. chalk the next week)
Construction (lego, junk modelling etc)
Choir

How much Lego would you need for a club?

Gardening club is very popular in our school.

I agree that 1.5 hours is a long time for just one activity, but maybe you could factor on some free play time at the end?

Lego is a good idea. The design challenge each week would work, you could also do mini competitions and teamwork challenges occasionally to mix it up.

My daughter's current favourite amongst her school's clubs is Endangered Animals club - they seem to be finding out about the animals and then doing related art/craft projects. She loved Create club when she was in the infants - they had a theme each week, some example if inspiration pieces and a bunch of junk and art stuff to create with. I the summer they run EcoClub, which is definitely on her list if things to look forward to. Other things they offer include Board games & puzzles, Hama beads, Minecraft, Lego, Cartoon drawing, dance, choir... plus a range of sporty ones, although they're not really her thing.

are these clubs where there would be a charge to attend

I’m surprised a private school doesn’t have clubs already? Or is it fairly new? What resources do you have in terms of space and money as those are your main constraints ? Some areas will have instructors you can pay for extra clubs if not enough teachers to run them .

Our school is a state school but one of the reasons I picked it was for clubs! The kids love them.

So, the most popular club funnily enough is Lego! They asked parents to donate. If you’ve got the budget you could buy extra but lots of people are happy to offload old stuff. It’s funny as kids can do it at home but they seem to enjoy doing it with their friends.

Cookery- this sells out in minutes. Just basic baking really.

craft club - all you need is an inspiring teacher and a bunch of materials.

Then there are loads of sports clubs. Run by an external company.

Other ones the kids can do at lunch, chess club, geography. Gardening is very popular! And then another club which is for raising money for a charity each term that the kids pick.

Yes, it's a newish school. We are not in the UK, so clubs are really only just becoming a thing here. The school day finishes at 12.30, so the club would run straight after that (after a lunch break). There'd probably be about an hour of actual club. It would serve both as a fun after-school extra activity and as a form of extended childcare, which parents have (obviously) been asking for. And yes, it would be a paid club. I'd have a budget for getting in materials.
Newest suggestion from school is that a club would run for 1 term which is 1/2 year (school year is divided into 2 terms), and then another club could run. So that would be around 17 sessions per club.

These are all really useful tips, v. much appreciate it.

Could you run a club for 1/2 term so you get 4 in per year and more variety? I think 17 weeks of whatever it was could feel pretty long :)