STEM NEXT
New Hampshire Afterschool is proud to be partnering with STEM Next to make out-of-school STEM opportunities a reality for New Hampshire’s young people, to help them thrive in STEM and beyond. Through afterschool and summer programs, we believe every child should have STEM opportunities that inspire curiosity, innovation, and the critical thinking skills for whatever comes next.
STEM Next Monthly Resources
We encourage you to check back each month for new and exciting STEM Next resources to inspire STEM learning. If you are using these resources please fill out this quick survey so New Hampshire Afterschool can see how these resources are being distributed. Thank you!
January is National Mentoring Month
January is National Mentoring Month! It’s a New Year and a great time to celebrate the power of role models and mentors. Research shows STEM role models help strengthen important outcomes for kids, including increased positive attitudes about STEM, increased positive STEM identities, and increased STEM career knowledge.
Program leaders and educators alike can learn all about the effective strategies of mentorship with free resources from The National Mentorship Resource Center, including recorded webinars on program design, putting research into practice, engaging families and more.
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Afterschool programs are also particularly effective when they foster near-peer mentorship—where older students guide younger peers. This is one of the critical strategies that we champion here at STEM Next. This research-backed approach fosters confidence, builds leadership, and helps keep youth engaged in STEM across ages and stages of their STEM journeys.
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Based on research we commissioned by the Connected Learning Lab at UC Irvine and STEM Next’s Million Girls Moonshot partners, this strategy is one of eight in our Making Connections project that bridges learning across ages and settings. Click Here to Learn More.
Webinar: Hands-On Engineering for Youth, Families, and Communities (Thursday, January 15, 2026, 7-8 PM)
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In this webinar facilitated by Boston’s Museum of Science, discover how YES STEM Event Activities bring quick, hands-on engineering to family nights, libraries, and community programs.
Looking for fun, flexible STEM activities that fit perfectly into family nights, libraries, community centers, and more? Join this free webinar introducing YES STEM Event Activities—open-ended, hands-on engineering challenges designed for youth ages 6–12 and family groups. In this session, you’ll explore the full YES product line, learn where and how the activities can be implemented, and get inspired by real-world examples of successful setups.
Each YES STEM Event Activity includes everything needed to run an engineering challenge for up to 20 groups of 3–5 participants, with expansion kits available for larger events. Facilatotrs will walk through station setup, materials organization, facilitation tips, and strategies to run successful events for different settings and audiences.
Get ready to explore how YES STEM Event Activities make it easy to bring meaningful, hands-on engineering experiences to your community. Click Here to Register.
Professional Development Opportunities
Activities for Youth
Crayola Creativity Week (January 26-February 1, 2026)
Crayola Creativity Week is a free, weeklong celebration designed to spark imagination and creative thinking across all subjects — including literacy, STEAM, and social-emotional learning. Programs, libraries, and educators can access seven days of downloadable hands-on resources, activity videos, creative challenges, and daily giveaways that are adaptable for out-of-school time. This year, STEM Next is partnering with Crayola to help bring these creative learning resources to the afterschool field.
Creativity is an essential career skill, especially in STEM fields — from engineers solving real-world challenges to innovators designing new solutions. Crayola Creativity Week resources support this career-connected learning and are available in multiple languages, helping learners express ideas, build confidence, and explore creative problem-solving. In 2025, Creativity Week reached over 13 million children across nearly 100,000 learning sites worldwide. Registration is open now. Sign up to bring creativity alive in your program and extend the fun with virtual events, planning tips, daily themes, and year-round resources.
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Turn Milk into Plastic
This fun, easy to do hands-on activity from Science Buddies includes two kinds of scientists: chemical engineers and materials engineers. Have you ever heard that plastic can be made out of milk? If this sounds like something made-up to you, you may be surprised to learn that from the early 1900s until about 1945, milk was commonly used to make many different plastic ornaments, including buttons, decorative buckles, beads and other jewelry, fountain pens, the backings for hand-held mirrors, and fancy comb and brush sets. Milk plastic (usually called casein plastic) was even used to make jewelry for Queen Mary of England! In this activity you will make your own casein plastic out of hot milk and vinegar.
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Engineering: Simple Machines
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier. In this lesson from Teach Engineering, youth are introduced to the six types of simple machines — the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, screw, and pulley — in the context of the construction of a pyramid, gaining high-level insights into tools that have been used since ancient times and are still in use today. In two hands-on activities, students begin their own pyramid design by performing materials calculations, and evaluating and selecting a construction site. The six simple machines are examined in more depth in subsequent lessons in this unit.
30 Practice Ideas to Increase STEM and Career Awareness in Your Classroom
In today’s rapidly evolving world, exposing students to career options at an early age is essential to preparing them for success. By beginning career exploration in middle school, educators can help students identify their interests and aspirations while building foundational skills for the future. Research shows that early exposure to career pathways fosters engagement and motivation, as students can see the relevance of their education to real-world opportunities. Learning Blade powered by eDynamic Learning offers educators the tools and resources to bring career exploration and STEM learning into the classroom, empowering students to discover their potential and inspiring them to reach their goals. (Learning Blade is funded in several states, find out if you have free access to the platform here.) To get started, explore the 30 practical and impactful ways teachers increase STEM and career awareness in their classrooms. Link here.