4-H Clubs are a great way for kids to make new friends, explore their interests, and learn valuable skills. Open to youth ages 5–19, our clubs offer a wide variety of topics and activities to match every passion, from animals and cooking to science, leadership, and more. All clubs are conveniently located in Charlottesville and the surrounding Albemarle County, giving kids the chance to connect, grow, and have fun close to home.

Main Club meets once per month.  Volunteers lead Project Groups to study topics of interest to the youth.  Project Groups can meet monthly or seasonally. Project Groups complete at least 6 hours of Project Time, and often complete Project Record Books.

Current clubs include:

Rivanna 4-H Community Club

Western Albemarle Club

Writer’s Eye challenges writers of all ages to use visual art in The Fralin as inspiration for the creation of original poetry and prose. This annual ekphrastic writing program—introduced by docents Carole Armstrong and Valerie Morris in 1986—has become the museum’s flagship educational offering. 

Writer’s Eye 2026 includes two works of art from The Fralin’s permanent collection, and six works on loan to the museum. Participants can explore the selections independently by visiting the museum any time during opening hours, or by scheduling a virtual or in-person tours through the Writer’s Eye tour booking form on our website. Participants can also engage asynchronously using our online resources including the Writer’s Eye Spotlight Talk videos on YouTube.

Thursday, November 5th: Last day of virtual and in-person Writer’s Eye tours

Thursday, November 12th: Entries Due

UVA Academic Year Data Science Bootcamps introduce young learners to data science and artificial intelligence through programs offered during the school year at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Intended for both middle and high school students with no previous coding experience. This camp will cover the basics of Python to equip participants with the foundational knowledge required to begin their coding journey. Those with previous experience coding in other languages, such as Java, are still eligible to participate. 

Dates: November 2-3, 2026

Time: 9 am - 3 pm daily 

Cost: $150

Location: UVA School of Data Science, 1919 Ivy Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903

Register for the fall HERE.

Questions? Email Emma Cox at emc2@virginia.edu 

The Reflections Program is a 10-day summer program for forty middle school students gifted in the visual arts, competitively selected from Charlottesville City, Albemarle, Greene, and Nelson Counties, as well as the private and home-school students in the region. 

Reflections provides conceptual and visual art experiences for artistically gifted students in association with their gifted peers.

The application for students in grades 6-8 can be found HERE, as well as additional information about the program.

Applications Due: Monday, March 1, 2027.

Explore NASA’s QUESST X-59 and discover how quiet supersonic flight works in this hands-on STEM workshop for middle school girls on Saturday, November 7th.

WeTech Workshops, a program of Charlottesville Women in Tech, are hands-on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) experiences for middle school girls, created in partnership with our high school advisory board. High school students help shape workshop ideas, facilitate activities, and serve as near-peer mentors, making technology feel more approachable and giving middle school participants a chance to learn alongside students just a few years ahead of them.

Each workshop gives students opportunities to take on creative, meaningful challenges in a fun, welcoming, and relaxed environment. Activities may include hands-on builds, design challenges, career exploration, demonstrations, and opportunities for students to share what they create.

No previous technology experience is required, just curiosity and a willingness to explore.

Sign ups and additional information is HERE. More info can be found on the WeTech blog.

The program is FREE, but you must reserve a spot to participate.

Each year, more than 800,600 students in sixth through eighth grades enter the VFW’s Patriot’s Pen® annual youth essay contest for a chance to win their share of more than $1 million in local and national awards. Each first place VFW Department (state) winner receives a minimum of $500 at the national level, and the national first place winner wins $5,000! 

The essay contest encourages young minds to examine America’s history, along with their own experiences in modern American society, by drafting a 300- to 400-word essay, expressing their views based on a patriotic theme chosen by the VFW Commander-in-Chief. 

Students interested in participating must submit their essay prepared on this year's theme, with a completed 2026-2027 entry form, to their local participating VFW Post. Find your sponsoring local VFW Post as applications must be turned in by midnight, October 31st.

The 2026-27 theme is: 

“What a Veteran Taught Me About America.”

"We are a group of chess enthusiasts that meet every week on Monday. We offer casual play, rated and unrated tournaments and group lectures. All ages and playing abilities are welcome!"

Meets at St. Mark Lutheran Church every Monday at 6:30 pm.

From resource management to conservation efforts, the way we use water can have a lasting effect. 

in the popular "Imagine a Day without Water Art Contest" by submitting your original artwork. 

This year's theme is "Small Drop, Big Difference." We invite artists to showcase the scale and impact water can have through realistic or abstract representation.

Submissions must be digtitally submitted or postmarked by October 26th.

A constantly evolving, filtered (by middle school) list of national competitions across various academic areas.

Reflections is a multi-level arts program that brings students, families, and communities together through the creativity. 

Each year, students create original works of art in response to a student-created theme. Students can enter one or more arts categories and participate the program division that best fits their grade level or support needs. Based on options available in each state, winning entries may advance for additional recognition at the state and national levels.

The 2027 Blue Planet Awareness Contest – Nature of Truth – challenges students to think critically about both natural and digital landscapes through the lens of environmental disinformation. Be part of the solution and raise awareness about what environmental disinformation looks like through art, writing, performance, film, or multimedia.

Students can submit one entry in for each of the seven categories:  Categories include: Visual Art: Handcrafted, Visual Art: Digital, Poetry & Spoken Word, Creative Writing, Film, Performing Arts: Music & Dance and Interactive & Multimedia.

Encourages middle schoolers to learn about the U.S. government and solve real-world community issues; three main stages:

1. essay identifying a community challenge, proposing a civic-minded solution, and incorporating Founding Principles and Civic Virtues;

2. local & state competitions involve live civics quiz and presentation of community solutions to a panel of judges;

3. National Championship to earn top prizes

The application for the 2027 competition will open on Monday, September 7, 2026, at 6:01 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time and will close on Tuesday, February 2, 2027, at 11:59 p.m. Hawaii Standard Time.

8th graders only, I'm afraid.

Teams of grade 8-12 students are challenged to design and build small devices that will experience apparent weightlessness, i.e. microgravity, in NASA’s 2.2 Second Drop Tower.  Each test object will be placed with water (and a little liquid soap) in a plastic vessel.  Each device must suck in as much water as possible during the fall, where that will be evaluated by the drop in the vessel’s water level.  The fluid shift must result from the device’s wetting properties only and not mechanical means, etc.!

Teams are only responsible for their small devices; NASA will provide the rest of the experimental hardware including the water vessel, video camera, lighting, etc.  After developing their concepts, the youth prepare their proposal, consisting of conceptual drawings and a short entry form, which is e-mailed to Ed-DropTower@lists.nasa.gov. 

Amphibian populations worldwide are in the midst of a mass extinction crisis, yet many people are completely unaware! We need your help in getting the word out: we encourage all nature lovers to seek out their inner frog artist and participate in the SAVE THE FROGS! Art Contest!

People of all ages, nationalities, and skill levels are encouraged to enter the contest, and we hope all schools will draw frog art on Save The Frogs Day (April 28th Every Year)!

The SAVE THE FROGS! Art Contest invites you to create your coolest frog artwork. The contest raises awareness of the amphibian extinction problem by getting people involved and interested, and the artwork is used on t-shirts, stickers and posters, and in greeting cards and books, to both publicize our cause and raise money for SAVE THE FROGS! amphibian conservation efforts.

Wiki Loves Monuments is an international photographic competition that invites the global community to document and preserve historic sites around the world on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

This year the United States is participating through the month of October. By sharing your photos under a free license that allows anyone to use them, you help document our history and share it with the rest of the world to enjoy through the internet, and get a shot at winning a prize!

Photos may have been taken at any time (including prior to this event), but must be uploaded during October 2026 to be included in the contest. The US contest formally begins October 1 in US Eastern time (UTC-4) and ends at the end of October 31 in Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time (UTC-10).