5 benefits of After School Program

Students jump up.

Attending afterschool program at a school brings a wide range of benefits to your child, you and the community. Afterschool programs can boost academic performance, expand exposure to broader STEAM subjects, reduce risky behaviors, promote physical health, give chances to increase friends, and provide a safe and managed environment to your child.

  1. Explore interests
  2. Promote physical health
  3. Opportunities to challenge
  4. Academic Advancement
  5. Improve social skills

1. Explore interest

After school programs provide a wide range of STEAM subjects such as programming, robotics, hands-on science, competitive math, critical thinking, electronic engineering, art and craft, and some sports. These STEAM programs give your child a chance to experiment in these STEAM area and learn more in-depth early on and help your child to find the area of interest.

2. Promote physical health
Some afterschool programs can play important role encouraging physical activities such as basketball, tennis, Karate, Taekwondo, Kung Fu, bally, table tennis, football, so on and promote physical health while allowing your child to experiment many activities without a huge commitment. Participation in afterschool programs has been associated with positive health outcomes, including reduced obesity (Mahoney, J., Lord, H., & Carryl, 2005).

3. Opportunities to challenge

Furthermore, these afterschool programs at a school tend to participate in nationwide competition such as Math Olympiad, Math Kangaroo, Spelling Bee, and others. These competitions offer additional opportunities to study and provide you and your child with a relative position in the nation or the broader population than the school.

4. Academic Advancement

Many afterschool programs provide additional classes on math, critical thinking, reading, and writing in addition to the homework help. These extra classes boost educational advancement. Since the group of students joins the class, it is easier for your child to study extra hours than staying at home.

5. Improve social skills

Your child will learn a lot about social activity, emotional intelligence and make many friends outside of the classroom by participating in afterschool programs. Many afterschool programs combine a few grades of students in one group. This dynamism offers unique opportunity to improve the social skills.

Overall, good afterschool programs can improve classroom behavior (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 2010), school attendance, academic aspirations, and can reduce the likelihood that a student will drop out (Huang, Leon, La Torre, Mostafavi, 2008).

If your child’s school does not offer enough afterschool programs, such as STEAM programmings, try work with PTA to introduce new programs into the school. It is best if your child school can provide a wide range of afterschool programs. Your child can participate in these programs directly after school finishes within the safe school environment. Cumberland Elementary school PTA in Sunnyvale has done excellent work in this viewpoint.