The Site Shelf
A week for one aftercare room, on one page. Print it for the staff room. Everything here is free, needs no accounts, and works with one shared screen or none.
Monday · Gym
A Back Pocket game with no equipment, then Corners in the hall.
Tuesday · Homework hour
Early finishers pick one short round, then show a staff member what they did.
Wednesday · Club time
Teenagers run a table of younger children with the six table cards.
Thursday · Fold Commons
A paper-folding table: everyone folds the same model, facing a partner.
Friday · Game night at pickup
Five teen-run tables for families as they arrive (the plan is below).
Friday: game night at pickup (45 minutes)
Five tables, each run by a teenager. Families sit down as they arrive and leave when they need to.
- The quick table: Pig with two dice. One teenager with a phone as the dice.
- The word table: Rhyme Catch. One teenager reading the prompts.
- The thinking table: Four in a row. One teenager and a printed board.
- The paper table: Fold across the table. One teenager folding first.
- The little ones table: TandemTots on one tablet. One teenager beside the youngest.
- Each table host practises their sixty-second explanation the day before (How to Explain a Game).
- Families sit at any table as they arrive; a new round starts every ten minutes, so nobody waits long.
- Hosts play too. A family can move tables whenever they like; nothing is scored across the night.
- Five minutes before the end, hosts call "last round" and each table names one thing it enjoyed.
For your IT team
If a school filter blocks a game, send them the allowlist page: every address the sites load from, and what they never do.
A paragraph for parents and funders
Our afternoons use free games from three nonprofit sites: Spark & Anvil, Spark & Whetstone and Fold Commons. Children play together around one screen, on paper, or with nothing at all, and older children learn to run games for younger ones. The sites have no ads, no accounts and no tracking, and nothing a child does is sent anywhere. We use them for turn-taking, talking and thinking together. We make no claim that they raise test scores.
Programs funded by the federal 21st Century Community Learning Centers program are asked to involve families; the Friday game night is one way to do that.