Benefits of Enrichment Activities
#blogBy Rachel Wells
Apollo After School makes sure that your child is not just cared for before and after school, but enriched. Enrichment programs improve education through their use of thought provoking and challenging hands on activities, which extend upon what students are already learning in their classroom.
Apollo After School provides children with enrichment activities in the areas of math, board games, yoga, science, STEAM lab, cooking, soccer, basketball, arts and crafts, civics, and entrepreneurship.
Enrichment activities are essential to academic success and social emotional development, two things Apollo instructors care deeply about.
Academic Benefits
There are proven connections between enrichment activities and academic success. Enrichment promotes critical thinking and problem solving skills, improve student’s ability to concentrate, and make learning more meaningful, valuable, and rewarding. Enrichment activities are fun, which helps students to become more engaged in their learning and retain more information.
Enrichment programs are typically interactive and project focused, and challenge students to use old concepts in new ways, while bringing new concepts to light. Exposing your child to new ideas and opportunities to explore new interests may lead to different career paths and hobbies in the future.
Social-Emotional Benefits
Enrichment activities give children opportunities to build friendships they might not otherwise have had the chance to make. When children are put into an environment with other children at a variety of levels and ages, the activities become more motivating, fun, and unique. These programs encourage children to work cooperatively with others.
Children look forward to after schools help because they know they will have a fun and relaxing time with peers away from school work, while staying in a familiar environment. Enrichment programs are usually made up of smaller groups, which leads to students getting more individualized attention and result in stronger relationships among peers.
Personal Benefits
Students that participate in enrichment activities, not only experience academic and social-emotional benefits, but they can also develop personal qualities they may not have previously known they had. Some personal qualities your child may develop during enrichment activities include:
- Increased self-confidence
- Increased self-esteem
- Creativity
- Perseverance
- Friendliness
- Leadership and decision making skills
More Benefits From Enrichment Activities
Enrichment activities greatly benefit children by providing opportunities for academic, social-emotional, and personal growth. After school programs are hands on, interactive, and challenging. If you have an opportunity to sign your child up for these activities, go for it. Enrichment activities can ignite passions and provide chances for discovery that they would not have found elsewhere.
