How many clubs do your primary aged children do?

Reception, currently swimming sat am and riding lesson once a month. Anymore would be too much right now she's absolutely exhausted from starting school and one of the younger ones

DS is 7 (year 3), and does:

Swimming
Gymnastics
Rugby
Tennis
Cello

He also does football in after school club, but that is really just supervised playing with his mates, and German samstagschule, but that is non-negotiable as we’re a bilingual family.

Like a PP, we didn’t intend for him to do so many but he really enjoys them all and doesn’t want to drop any. I suspect he’ll drop rugby before secondary school, but at the minute he is still having loads of fun with it.

I also have a Year 1 child and with school, she does Spanish club on a Monday Gymnastics on a Wednesday and Dance club on a Thursday. Outside of school, she has an extra dance class also on Thursdays, an art class on Friday, ice skating lessons on Saturday and swimming lessons on Sunday. She then does Kumon tuition every Wednesday and Saturday. She now wants to do badminton lessons and also is completely set to be joining Rainbows so I have no idea how we are supposed to fit this in.

I also have a Year 5 daughter but she does much less. She is very sporty so does swimming lessons, gymnastics lessons and goes to her netball club. She also does piano lessons but she is going to quit those next week as she says she hates them. I've been encouraging her to go for the past weeks but her heart's not in it unfortunately.

Mine is also year 1 and also does 2. Swimming, and performing arts.

My 5yr old doesn't do any except swimming lessons on a Saturday if we manage to get him up and there on time.

I see my friends signing their kids up to x, y, z clubs and the kids are all exhausted!

My son only does one activity, which keeps him occupied most of the days of the week: Basketball.
My daughter does Netball, Piano, Scouts, 11+ Tuition, Gymnastics and Ice-skating.

DS is in reception and has ADHD so I need to keep him occupied - he’s been swimming twice a week, gymnastics, scouts, kumon, instrument, and a team sport since the end of preschool. He wants to take up 2 other sports and is waiting to turn 5 so he can start climbing but we’ve said no for now as he still needs an early bedtime. Every child is different. You can’t really compare. In his class extracurriculars seem to be parent led rather than child led so nobody else ever does more than one or two things a week whereas because I’ve got work flexibility I’ve always let him decide what he wants to do.

DD(7) in Y2 does: Beavers, football training and piano during the week, plus three days of after-school club (childcare). Swimming and tennis in the weekend.

DS(10) in Y6 does: football and choir straight after school. Cubs and football training during the week. Football match and swimming on the weekend.

PS I agree with keeping weekends lower key, the problem with team sports is the commitment and not being able to do other things (side-eye to DH and his football team)

Dc1 has ASD so extra curricula are kept quite limited as they need decompression time- it's disability swim squad 2x a week and a drawing club at school. Was doing guides but the group closed and wasn't wildly enthusiastic about going elsewhere. I'm trying to sort peri voice lessons through school.

DC2 does bloody loads- judo, forest school, piano, swimming lessons and also does a very niche cycle sport (although not every weekend, 2 ish times a month) and a casual drop in football session. She's very energetic...

A lot of it happens in school so is easier- we both work full time. Swimming works out well as I can swim at the same time. I think it's good for kids to do something out of school but it's of course limited by finance, time and sibling interests.

We do some casual stuff as well, e.g. a SUP youth club or parkrun. DC1 likes hiking.

My daughter is 8 year 3, she does 2 clubs cheerleading and choir. Both within the school and free.

We have got to a point with my eldest that she is doing too many things but doesn’t really want to quit anything. It’s very easy to add without taking things away.

I think it depend on the kid, my oldest when he was in primary school just did chess club and cross country and that was more than enough for him.
My DD is doing many dance and cheer classes each week and only has Sundays off, but she absolutely loves it and never complains.

DD is 4. She does gymnastics on a Monday and musical theatre on a Tuesday. She's on the waiting list for Rainbows and swimming lessons. Any more than 3 or 4 is too many imo, overscheduling isn't good for children or parents.

I work 0.8 over 5 days so I can mostly do pick ups. Also clubs they're both at give extra hours for work/life admin... Or there's separate clubs more or less adjacent at the same time. Again quiet time for me.

As they get older clubs get later

Anything straight after school is very convenient!

Both need more exercise than school gives, if they weren't in clubs they'd be being crazy in the house or garden needing supervision, we don't have an after-school club at school.

Dc1 age 9 yr5. Dc2 yr 3. Both do a school club Monday straight after school. Swimming once a week.

Previously did cubs and beavers but those combined with working left us very little weeknight time. They wanted to give up so that's what we did. I'm a single parent and was finding it too much.

How on earth do you all fit so many clubs in with family life!?

Taking and picking up multiple children to multiple clubs, plus homework, dinner, bath, a good amount of sleep for them - on top of parents working full time? I'd be so overwhelmed. Maybe I'm just not organised enough, but I only have 1 toddler plus currently pregnant so not that that stage yet anyway.

My son is in year 6

he does after school football on a Thu

he plays for a team that train once a week autumn/winter and twice a week in summer

matches every sun

we used to do swimming but that stopped in year 5

its definitely enough and wouldn't want to take on anymore.

Mine did multi sports at school, fun choir out of school and swim lessons at that age. Dropped swimming and sports in favour of being choristers, both played piano and did another instrument too, but that's more than just a club. One makes her living from music

Most of my DS's activities happen at school, so we just pick him up later. Then we take him to 1 activity during the weekend and 1 that starts at 6,30pm on a weekday. The third activity he goes to starts at 5pm on Friday, but it's close to home and we don't have to stay so one of us manages the drop off and carries on working from home.
We are considering adding another weekend activity that we know he would like and would be a nice addition to his weekends.

Love this. My daughter does ballet on Friday and a swimming lesson on Saturday morning. Plenty enough.

Last year my P7 sports mad DD did

Scouts
Football x 3
Basketball
Netball
Swimming
Curling

This year she's now in S1 doing

Scouts
Football x 6 (3 at school)
Swimming
Curling
Table tennis
Fitness

Ds does scouts and basketball

DD does basketball

It's enough

My Y1 DS does Rugby, Football, Fencing and Piano as in-school/after-school clubs and we take him to Swimming, Athletics and Beavers separately.
We are also considering adding Musical Theater.

My dd as a child was a live wire with boundless energy and we started her on ballet just before her third birthday to see if it would help to tire her out. It didn't! She then started a tots gym thing which she enjoyed, and then we added swimming in when she was about 5. Brownies came a bit later on, as did tap and modern dance. Then she added musical theatre and dropped Brownies, more dance classes - by about ten she was doing 3 or 4 hours of ballet classes a week since she seemed to like that one the most. She was doing something nearly every day after school, but appeared to thrive on it. No idea where she got the energy from, as I'm a prize-winning couch potato!

I'm not sure many kids would want to do that much, they are all different. And I was basically working to pay for it all.