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Becca
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Extra curricula activities do you do?
Especially if you have a large family. Mine are starting to want to do more but I'm not sure if I am able to lug everyone around everyday (which would happen if I sign them up for all they want to do..).
Currently we have gymnastics, baseball, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. Then we have Church and music lessons too. They've been talking about soccer, softball, theater, dance and joining the competition gymnastic team.. I don't think we can do them all but I don't know what is a reasonable amount either.
What do you guys do? 
(Hopefully I put this on the right section of the forum!)
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Married to Josh, Mom to 8 kids 11 and under. 
On summer break!
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mommy4ever
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Becca, I think it depends on the family. Where you live, climate and children. I have 4 kiddos, not a large family we keep them active. I know smaller families than mine who feel they have no time for any extra-curricular activities, or just 1.
I think it also depends on the kids. My kids need physical activity, or they are distracted and antsy. We're in the city, so letting them roam and go climb trees is out of the question. We have somethings they can do, but come winter, and -30 weather, outside time is pretty much eliminated, and we have a LONG winter. Snow just finished melting a few weeks ago. So getting the kids into sports helps them focus.
If we were in a milder climate, not in the city, I'd imagine that need would be less. I know all summer when we're camping, they are outside, digging in the sand and dirt, exploring, pond dipping, making up games. But winter here starts in September and ends in May, there is not much we can do outside unless it is an organized event on a mild day. We direct their energy with sports.
It really is dependent on your individual circumstances
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Mom to 4,
1 graduated June 2012
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2 homeschooled(one considering art school!)
ardently praying for a new addition to our family.
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Mackfam
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We are very considerate about activities outside the home. Different seasons allow for different levels of time spent outside the home so for that reason I'm not going to list the activities that we do - because it actually wouldn't be that helpful for you. Your family season and circumstances are going to be so different from mine!
I read a quote once in Hearth and Home which really resounded within my heart and stuck with me:
Quote:
| Some mothers have responsibilities that take them away from home everyday, but for most of us, daily trips are really unnecessary and can be a serious distraction. I've learned to keep lists and consolidate our trips, I find that I need to remain home for long stretches of time in order to get beyond the maintenance part of homemaking (stuff like cleaning, laundry, and ironing). If I don't stay home, I miss the creative part of homemaking. <snip> Without these I'd go crazy and burnout would become a serious threat. |
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That held true for me years ago as a younger mom when I first read it and it gave voice to an interior need to be more attentive at home. And it still holds true for me now as a mom that's a little bit older (  ) with older kids and all the different responsibilities and needs that season brings.
In general, I'd say that "a reasonable number of activities out of the home" would likely be different from family to family depending on more factors than I could list! For our family, if there is so much going on and I'm functioning as a shuttle service and can't be attentive to the home arts, then we're doing too much. As a family, our schedule is full, but we're careful not to let it become a stressful burden to any member of the family. This requires brainstorming with dh because he's the person most intimately acquainted with your family, your season of life, the resources you have, the ages of your children, any grown children that can drive, etc.
I'll add one more observation that has become a high priority for us as a family and that is that children NEED time to just BE. They need time to play, explore, get dirty, fall down, make mudpies, sit in mom's lap, read a book...time to be a child. They need time to be together with their siblings and all that involves - the good times and the bad. Without enough down time and margin (that's unplanned, unorchestrated time outside of lessons and the needful activities like meals) in the day, they begin to expect to be entertained and this then begins to translate into other parts of the day...like lesson time. Suddenly, they aren't satisfied with quiet reading, they need a curriculum that entertains them. Their play time gravitates more toward video games than to tree climbing. I actually find that there is great value in a little boredom for a child. This moment presents opportunity! It's not my job to fill that moment!!! (Although I will fill it with a chore if the child can't overcome the temptation to whine!) It's my job to invite them to think beyond it - to something real, an idea that requires the child to use imagination.
I need to be clear - I don't have a problem at all with outside the home classes, activities, and co-ops! These are wonderful and good opportunities! Sometimes however, as a family that home educates, and considering our season of life, I must say no to a good thing like an activity out of the home, and yes to the greater good of time spent at home - even if I have a child (or more) that doesn't recognize that dad and I are guarding the greater good.
I want to recommend one of my favorite threads here of all time!
Living the slow life
It's long, so sit down with it and a cup of tea, but do enjoy it! Many fantastic ideas are shared on this thread as well as practicals that really help you consider how to determine what's right for your unique and individual family in terms of time out of the home!
Prayer is an excellent way to begin discerning this decision for your family, Becca! May the Holy Family guide you and your dh in shepherding your precious little family!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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pumpkinmom
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My boys just do Scouts. This keeps us busy and the oldest was provided with much physical activity this past year due to certain merit badges he was working on. This is pretty much it for us. We do add on occasional short term things. For example we have done swimming lessons a few months a year for the past few years, but my boys are done with those. We did an 8 week archery class (for our homeschool group) this winter and we are doing a 4 week class this summer. Wonderful things are always coming up, but I just can't force myself to commit to anything else without going insane.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
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Angie Mc
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If you can consolidate talents and interests into a primary family activity, that can help! Our family is heavily involved in baseball, supporting players (3 players, 3 different levels, 5 teams) and all of us are fans.
Plus, each child has a secondary activity going. These tend to come and go, giving them a chance to try different things out.
While I'm not one to encourage running around for the sake of keeping busy, I do push myself beyond my limits to ensure that each child's life is fitting to our collective and their individual interests and talents. It's a lot of work, especially before they are driving, yet the rewards are GREAT! My kids, in their own ways, feel heard, support, sacrificed for, and a part of something bigger than themselves.
Remind me that I said all this when I'm crashing after a long weekend baseball .
Love,
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Angie Mc
Maimeo to Henry! Dave's wife, mom to Mrs. Devin+Michael Pope, Aiden 20,Ian 17,John Paul 11,Catherine (heaven 6/07)
About Me
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JodieLyn
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We tend to do all family activities for those old enough to participate.. we do scouts and in the spring we do lacrosse and in the summer we do swim team BUT.. we're only about 3/4 of a mile from the pool and older kids can walk to the pool.. and for me swimming in the morning is sooooo much easier than constant evening practises. Plus swimming is SUCH a family sport.. everyone competes at their own age level but everyone competes at each swim meet so if we go, it's one location (the pool) and everyone gets to participate.
Lacrosse is more difficult because it's different age levels but we really enjoy the sport so it's worth it. Plus, kids can get rides or walk too.
So a lot of it depends on how much you need to stay at every practise for every child and how much you're willing to connect with other people and share ride giving and stuff like that.
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Jodie, wife to Dave
G-18, B-17, G-15, G-14, B-13, B-11, G-9, B-7, B-5, B-4
All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.
-Sir Walter Scott
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SallyT
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It really depends . . .
I have four kids, with a 5-year gap between my second and third, so really I have almost two separate sets. When the first set were, say, 10 and 6, and the second set were babies/toddlers who had to get dragged around to things, we had a pretty firm "no more than two" rule for activities. At that time, both the older kids were heavily involved in children's theater, and that was our main extracurricular (and it was time-consuming, especially when people had lead roles, and especially as performances drew near). My oldest daughter also took violin, and my son was a Cub Scout. At one stage my second also played YMCA soccer, which did not last long -- I'm not a sit-around-at-practice kind of mom, and keeping up with littles there was hard. And at one stage both older kids sang in a treble choir, which sometimes overlapped with theater -- that was a year I remember being in the car a lot, and for a long time afterwards I whittled our activities down to virtually nothing, to give us time to be at home.
Now, my oldest at home does Scouts and participates in a running club and training classes at the Y -- BUT most of the time he gets himself there, and they're mostly over by 6 in the morning. The younger kids do Scouts (my husband does Cub/Boy Scouts with the boys, and I do AHG with my youngest daughter), and they both participate in a YMCA Gym and Swim class, which is a drop-off deal on Monday afternoons. Youngest daughter also does non-competitive Irish dance. Assuming she continues for very long with dance, as she begins to perform more and it becomes more time-consuming, I think AHG will probably have to go. Another way of saying that would be: We'll have to prioritize.
I do absolutely agree with Jen that kids need time to be. Open-ended time is also a very high priority in our family. We like the social outlet of certain activities, and we like the opportunities to do things and learn skills that we can't do and learn at home, and as Angie says, kids do like to see that we're willing to sacrifice some of our own convenience for the sake of their passions -- but we value the quality of our home and family life as our top priority. My husband is the first to object when family dinner evaporates as a regular ritual, and in fact that's really important to me, too. Sometimes our dinners are hurried, because people have to be at Scouts, but the year we were driving from choir to Little Caesar's for a five-dollar pizza to eat in the car on the way to play practice was a year whose level of busy intrusiveness we haven't wanted to repeat.
Sally
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lapazfarm
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Our general rule of thumb for our kids has always been "scouts plus one." So, our boys always have Boy Scouts plus one other activity (usually a sport) going on at one time. Scouts is year-round, but sports tend to be seasonal so they would often fit in 2 sports as there usually isn't an overlap (ex: they'd play fall soccer and spring baseball, etc.) My girls have never been interested in Girl Scouts, so they usually just stuck to sports, mostly soccer and softball, though one was in marching band at the local high school.
I think this rule kept a nice balance between home and outside time, and kept me from running around too very much, though there were those saturdays with three games in three fields at once... 
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us-schooling in beautiful Fairbanks, Alaska.
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Erin
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Generally we have always had the rule that each child only does 1, some of this is logistics, some financial. The exception to this is music, sometimes a child may do music on top of sports, but the teacher comes to our house so it is not an extra logistic burden.
Many years we have been lucky in that they have all done the same activity, ie soccer in winter, swimming in summer, with a time or two at other activities like gymnastics or art lessons.
Last year our oldest ds (prior for leaving for college)had his car license and a job, so he did three activities, karate, swimming and clarinet. We paid for one, he paid for the other and drove himself.
This year we have only 2 doing soccer (first time in over a decade) and one being a soccer referee. Two of the others have chosen to do nothing. So I'm only out 2 afternoons a week and Saturday mornings.
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
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Kristie 4
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Ours is logistics and financial!
My boys all play music, most playing in the orchestra as well.
My dd dances 12 hours a week.
They all act once a year in a Shakespeare troupe and two act in more than one.
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Kristie in Canada
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A Walk in the Woods
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Rebeccca
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AMDG,
Well, before this question I would have said we don't do very many at all. Then I listed them . . .
Part of it is that I never considered some of these things to be extra. Music instruction, for example, isn't extra. Ditto for youth group. Our homeschool group has one and if my daughter is free and interested, she goes. If not, she doesn't. I didn't consider that extra curricular, rather, getting together with friends.
We take sewing lessons and I consider it art and a necessary skill, not extra-curricular. We go swing dancing and I consider it fun, not extra-curricular.
She has swim team and I definitely consider it extra b/c team sports take a lot out of us. We looked long and hard to find one that didn't meet in the evenings but still, when it's meet season, we have one per week.
We allow one play per year during the summer and that definitely counts as extra-curricular b/c it is a time hog and usurper of evenings. bah humbug.
AND . . . can you believe we will be adding one in October. We will lose our (WONDERFUL) sewing teacher in August. sob. We still intend to do something for sewing plus we want to add gardening. I have an acquaintance who does gardening classes once per month and is a gardening mentor. She starts the new gardening year in October. We have tried gardening but with no luck whatsoever. Now my daughter has shown an interest so, gardening it is.
We go to daily mass 2x/wk and adoration 2x/wk and definitely do not consider those extra-curricular, either. also Bible study on Wed. evenings that we don't count as extra-curricular.
shesh! we do a lot. I never realized.
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amyable
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Five kids here and we do much less than we used to, mostly due to logistics...I'm the only one that can be counted on to drive so if there is a 5yo in one activity and the 8yo needs to get to another activity at the same time, I can't do it (this happened a lot with soccer).
Our main "thing" is performance roller skating. Their classes all meet on the same day, and luckily it is close so I'm just going back and forth, back and forth.  The older kids occasionally walk home. 1-3 times a month we go to the local rink for a homeschool skating outing. Every summer we wind up signing up some for gymnastics, and there is also church youth group for the older two. That's it.
I'm at the point where I think I can add one more thing...but I'm also considering going back to work and need to study for my certification exams so that may put a damper on that!
I'd love for them to do more, particularly music lessons, but I can't seem to make it work all by myself. 
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Amy
mom of 5, ages 6-16, and happy wife of 
The Highly Sensitive Homeschooler
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Becca
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Thanks for all the replies!
I don't consider Church extra curricular but it's another thing we go to during the week. Music Lessons are actually at my house so that's not a big deal either (Hubby and I both agree they are important). My husband is able to help taking them.
We were actually talking about it and my girls said they didn't want to do Girl Scouts anymore if they could do something else instead. 
I definitely agree with you Jen that free time for kids is important! That's why I'm struggling to find a balance. I'll take a look at the link when I have some time and my brain is functioning properly (it's getting late..). 
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Married to Josh, Mom to 8 kids 11 and under.
On summer break!
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guitarnan
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We have only two children and we have always limited activities to what Mom (that's me!) can handle, driving-wise.
Our children did a lot of team sports in WV, and that involved a lot of driving during baseball and soccer seasons. When we moved to MD, we cut out team sports in favor of archery (one hour, once a week at the same time and in the same place). Whew.
Then...dance took over our lives.
So, my son did Scouts and archery, and my daughter did dance, music (first piano, then guitar, now violin) and archery. We tried Girl Scouts for a while but we both wound up having issues with the program and with time commitments. Our current rule is that she has to give up something (e. g. guitar) to take up something new (violin), because I have to be able to do all the driving myself. We have a dance carpool, thank goodness.
One of my friends (who was a Navy wife when she raised her sons; her husband is retired now) had the rule Scouts Plus One. Each of her two boys could pick one activity beyond Scouts. (The older son chose swim team. He's now my daughter's godfather.)
Sometimes I think that the crazed activity schedules most families endure give our children the idea that all fun ends at adulthood and that they have to try/do/win everything now, before college.
I have started telling my children, as they mature toward adulthood, is that there is time to do the things you love when you're an adult, too. Not every week, and perhaps you will need to take time off when your children are young. But...you don't have to do everything interesting when you're a child or a teen. You can still pursue interests after age 18!
(And, yes, I still find it hard to make time for my own interests, but I've found ways to work in a little bit of exercise a few days a week, and a little bit of traditional Irish music on some Fridays, and a lot of reading...)
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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Erica Sanchez
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I hesitate to list ours as well. Ack.
Everyone takes piano from about age 6 or 7 and up. This is considered a school subject and their classes are close to home and back-to-back. This is something we do not regret at all. Our oldest is offering lessons this summer for good money and all kids can be heard playing for fun throughout the day. So worth it to us.
Everyone takes homeschool dance classes (ballet, ballroom and folk) that are also close to home and back-to-back. These are held at a rec center and the little ones get good playtime with friends and the moms get to visit so almost like a park day. The classes are amazing and we count them as PE and they are inexpensive. Totally worth it.
The girls are in choir but this is almost like another 'school' subject since most is in Latin and it doubles as service to our parish.
Over the years the kids have done baseball, volleyball, soccer and basketball. Because the practices and games are in the evening and on weekends, we still have lots of time during the day at home. We receive calls for one of our kids to play cub/travel ball, but we have declined so far and stick to the basic/local leagues which are pretty manageable. It helps that both my husband I enjoy sports quite a bit. :)
My older kids did not do a lot at all when they were younger and we tend to start our younger ones in things a bit older than most. We give priority to the older kids, especially the high schoolers who either need an extra class or activity for school or might be aging out of a sport (like our 14 year old who still plays AYSO soccer - he gets to play, but our 7 year old will wait to begin....does that make sense?) This helps with the overall schedule.
Even with many children and a good number of classes or activities outside the house, we have three at home days (M,T,TH) and two additional afternoons (W,F) at home. Nothing on Sundays which is a choice and a blessing.
It gets crazier when you have teens, but easier when you have teen drivers. Having teens also allows me or a driver to run someone to a practice and not disrupt what is going on at home by having to stop and load everyone in the car.
When we are home, which is a lot, our days are pretty unstructured and the younger kids especially have tons of free time to just be. I am a huge believer in this.
We also do almost nothing scheduled during the summer. No sports, no classes, no commitments.
Your kids are still young, Becca. Take your time. You have lots of years ahead of you for sports and activities. Something that Cash and I have tried to do is remain in control of the schedule and give ourselves permission to say no to the many extra things that come up (parties and such for us or them) when we want or need to be home together.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
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Have a beautiful and fun day!
Erica in San Diego
(dh)Cash, Emily, Grace, Nicholas, Isabella, Annie, Luke, Max, Peter, 2 little souls ++, and sweet Rose who is legally ours!
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Becca
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I actually figured out that we could do most of the activities they want.. the gymnastics team is only 4 weeks. Ballroom dancing (ballet was all year so I'm trying to compromise) are only during the winter. Theater is run all year but you can choose only to do one play. I just haven't decided if I can do it or not.
All year - Boy scouts and gymnastics
Fall - Soccer, Gymnastics TEAM
Winter - Theater, Ballroom dancing
Spring - Softball (just Molly), Baseball, Soccer (my other 2 girls)
This would have us out of the house a lot. Pretty much every day but it's all in the evening.. I think I'll do it for the fall because they really want to play soccer and do the gymnastics team and then see what happens. Maybe it won't be as bad as I think.
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herdingkittens
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We have always figured we would farm out (pay for) lessons for something physical and something musical. So far all ours want to do the same thing - ballet and violin. There have been other requests for gymnastics, soccer, etc., but when asked if they would trade what they are doing now for those other activities, they give a resounding "NO WAY!"
I am thankful for this because I could not handle anything else. RIght now, they do a private lesson once a week and orchestra once a week for violin. Ballet nights end up being 4 times a week, but I'd like to get that down to 3 this coming fall if I can. When they get older, we may feel differently and be open to a bit of branching out, but for our family at this is all we can handle without feeling stressed out. That being said, I was VERY happy when all the events ending for the year this year and I refuse to do any summer lessons (no one has really asked, though)! Last year we did some lessons in the summer and I felt like I never got a break - that fall was a bit of a rude awakening... 2 years ago my motto/goal for the year was "peaceful/basic needs met/unrushed" - best year ever and I need to go back to that!
Anyways, those are the big 2 that we are committed to, but there are little events and activities that we do here and there, just not ones that require a long term commitment.
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Topic: How many..
