I have a very specific summer-school memory burned into my brain.
It’s 2:13 PM. The AC is losing a fight it didn’t sign up for. Someone’s water bottle is sweating more than the students. And the whole room has that special summer-school energy—half “I’m here to catch up,” half “if this lasts one minute longer I may evaporate.”
I wasn’t the teacher. I was one of the kids in the seats.
Which is exactly why I care about the activities in this post: the difference between “summer school feels like punishment” and “summer school is weirdly fun” usually comes down to whether the class has something engaging to do, not just something to finish.
So here are six activities that would’ve absolutely upgraded my summer-school experience from “time served” to “okay… this is actually kind of fun.”
The quick list
- Products: The Card Game
- Classroom Camp Newspaper
- The Outdoor Museum Walk
- Mystery Box Engineering Challenge
- The Summer Mini Podcast
- Bottle Rocket Vibes Launch Challenge
1- Products: The Card Game
Okay yes, disclosure time: Products: The Card Game is my game.
But I’m not including it here to turn this into a sneaky infomercial. I’m including it because it was built for a very specific classroom moment that summer school has in abundance:
When the room is drifting… and you need a fast “snap back” activity that gets everyone talking without begging.
The basic loop is simple. Students combine prompts to invent a new product, then pitch it like they’re trying to win the room. It’s part creativity game, part communication challenge, part “wait… why am I suddenly confident?” machine.
And here’s the real reason it works in a summer-school setting: it gives students permission to be playful while still doing something that looks like real learning from the outside. You don’t have to sell it. The activity sells itself because everyone wants their idea to be the one people remember.
If I’m imagining this in a summer-school classroom, I can practically hear the shift: that first laugh when someone reads their combo out loud, the first team huddle, the first kid who normally stays quiet suddenly jumping in because they have a genuinely good angle for the pitch.
A few ways this plays especially well in summer:
- You can run it as a low-stakes “pitch party.”
- You can run it like a game show with judges.
- You can make it collaborative so groups build one product together and refine it round after round.
The sneaky win is that students practice ideation, persuasion, teamwork, and presenting without it feeling like you’re “making them do public speaking.”
It just feels like a game. Which is the point.
Want some more activities? Check out my top picks for team building activities for kids.
2- Classroom Camp Newspaper
This is the easiest way I know to get students writing without announcing “today we are writing,” which—if you’ve ever been in summer school—is basically the equivalent of yelling “everyone please sigh loudly together.”
The move is: run a mini newsroom for a day.
Pick a theme that fits your summer-school reality. It can be light (“this week’s funniest moments,” “the snack power rankings”) or more reflective (“what we wish we learned earlier,” “how to bounce back after a rough semester”). Then have students ship a one-page newspaper or newsletter by the end of class.
The magic ingredient is the deadline, not the assignment. Summer students tend to respond better to “we’re publishing something today” than “write a paragraph because I said so.”
And when it’s done, it creates instant culture. There’s something real to point at. Something to share. Something to laugh about. Something that makes the class feel like a place, not a holding cell.
3- The Outdoor Museum Walk
Summer school in a classroom the entire time can feel like eating saltines with no water. You’ll survive… but it’s bleak.
If you can take the activity outside, even for 15 minutes, it changes everything.
A museum walk is basically a rotating gallery of stations. You post things around the space—student work, photos, short quotes, mini reading excerpts, fun prompts—and students walk through, read, and react.
Then you bring everyone back together for discussion.
Instead of asking “what did you notice,” ask “what would you steal?”
What idea would you borrow? What headline would you remix? What argument would you improve? That question makes it feel less like “school discussion” and more like “creative competition,” which is where summer-school kids tend to wake up a little.
It also solves a classic summer problem: if students are restless, movement isn’t a distraction—it’s the fix.
Want some funny activities? Check out some of my picks for funny 'getting to know you' activities.
4- Mystery Box Engineering Challenge
This one works because constraints do the hard work for you.
Give each group a “mystery box” of random materials—tape, straws, paper clips, cups, rubber bands, index cards, whatever you’ve got. Then give them a mission.
What’s great about this in a summer-school context is that it doesn’t require long reading stamina or perfect writing. It’s physical, collaborative, and iterative. Teams build something, it fails, they adjust, it improves. The feedback loop is immediate. That alone keeps people engaged.
If you want it to feel like more than “craft time,” add a tiny story prompt: a made-up customer, a silly constraint, a real-world scenario. Suddenly they’re not just building a tower—they’re designing a solution.
And summer school loves anything that feels like a challenge instead of a chore.
5- The Summer Mini Podcast
This is the activity that makes you do a double take because suddenly the room is… focused.
Students create a 2–5 minute podcast episode in small groups. A phone voice memo is enough. No one needs equipment. No one needs to be “good at audio.” The point is making something listenable.
Give them a format (interview, debate, storytime, mini documentary) and a topic that has edges. Not “tell me about summer.” More like “the most underrated snack,” “one rule we’d change about school,” or “a serious investigation into why mosquitoes exist.”
Podcasting forces structure without feeling like structure. They have to plan what matters, in what order, and who says what. Then when they listen back, they self-edit because nobody wants to sound awkward on record.
That’s the whole cheat code: they care about the output.
And if there’s one thing summer school needs, it’s activities where students want the finished product to be good.
6- Bottle Rocket Vibes Launch Challenge
This was my favorite back in summer school.
Real bottle rockets can get into safety and policy territory fast, so instead of giving instructions for anything explosive or dangerous, here’s how to keep the same “launch day” energy in a safe, classroom-friendly way.
The goal is still the same: teams design something, test it, iterate, and then run a dramatic final launch like it’s mission control.
A few ways to get that bottle-rocket vibe without the risk:
- Paper straw rockets that launch with a quick puff of air.
- Balloon rockets that race on a string across the room.
- Paper airplane engineering with iterations and a target-based “landing zone.”
- A “mission patch” + short design explanation so teams can show what changed between prototypes.
What makes this perfect for summer school is the mix of movement, competition, and iteration. It feels like a real event. Students get invested. They argue about design decisions like tiny engineers. And the room gets that rare summer-school thing: actual buzz.
The summer school win condition
School doesn’t need to be boring.
It needs to feel like progress.
That usually happens when students are making something, sharing something, testing something, or building something that gives them a quick win—and a reason to show up tomorrow.
These six activities all do that in different ways. Some are louder. Some are calmer. Some are pure creativity. Some are structured challenges.
But they all have one thing in common:
They turn summer school from “time served” into “wait… this is kind of working.”