Walk-in Activity Ideas
Not sure what to do for a walk-in activity?
We have put together several suggestions for walk-in activities that you could run. We hope that these help inspire you and also give you a good idea of what types of activities work well with the walk-in activity format. You are more than welcome to take any idea listed below to run as-is at one of our Splash programs.
Please be sure to familiarize yourself with the walk-in activities guidelines on this page.
More Casual Activities
Games
Board and Card
- poker or black jack strategy
- UNO
- SET
- Scrabble or Bananagrams
- Dominion
- Settlers of Catan
- Diplomacy
- physical question cards or question packs
- Trivial Pursuit
- Sporcle
- Jeopardy
- quizbowl
- Ninjas
- What are you doing?
- Mafia
- telephone pictionary
- powerpoint karaoke
- contact
Artistic and Creative
- learn to knit
- thread jewelry
- hemp bracelets
- pixel art with post-it notes
- origami (free-form, paper cranes, cootie catchers)
- chinese paper cuts
- trash/candy wrapper art
- balloon animals
- intro to sketching or how to draw five cool things
- mural
- music - singing, whistling, etc.
Hobbies and Skills
Physical
- yo-yo
- frisbee
- dance
- juggling
- skipping rope
- card/magic tricks
- Rubiks cube
- speech and debate techniques
- crossword puzzles (regular or cryptic)
- chess
- puzzles
- brain teasers
- riddles
- sudoku
More Academic Activities
Math and Computer Science
- acting out sorting algorithms
- cryptography
- human knots
- fractals
- visual proofs
- live coding challenges
- Python Bee
Earth and Climate Science
- identifying rocks and minerals
- campus treasure hunt
- walking discussion of the geology of Stanford campus
- cloud observing
- predicting weather (looking at satellite data)
Neuroscience and Psychology
- science of vision/optical illusions
- two truths and a lie
Chemistry
- guess pH with cabbage test strips
- diet coke and mentos
- chromatography
- science of bubbles
- chemical reactions demos (e.g. elephant toothpaste catalysis)
- GAK - make your own polymer
Physics and Engineering
- test your intuition demos (e.g. gyroscopes)
- Oobleck - non-Newtonian fluid
- circuits
- fermi problems
- newspaper engineering
- spaghetti engineering
- card houses
- paper airplanes
- “Is it magnetic?"
- NanoDays activity kits
- optics
Biology
- identifying microbes under microscopes
- intro to histology
- evolution demos
- five diseases you have never heard of
- DNA/build a gene cut-and-paste activity
Writing, Literature, and Art
- poetry readings and discussion
- writing games
- short story or poetry prompts
- wikinovels
- film tropes
- fandom debates in literature/film/TV shows
- musical performance by Stanford student group
- how to make things (slides, reports, resumes) look nice
- principles of typography
History and Social Sciences
- history of the building that you’re in
- history of the Stanford Prison Experiment: a walking tour
- giant game of Risk
- debate classes about popular science topics like genetically modified foods
- game theory
General Knowledge
- getting into college Q&A
- careers in science Q&A
- making the most out of community service info session
- how to interview (specifically for college)
- networking info session
- memory and study techniques presentation
Last modified by mesako on Feb. 20, 2014 at 04:30 p.m.