best activities for primary school girl please?

[thankGodTheSunIsFinallyOut]

My DD is age 6.5 and has so far shown skill in music (can play drums quite well and a bit of piano so far but would have a go at anything) sports (always winning stuff) and fancies the idea of tap although have only found ballet locally so far.

Problem is I can only afford one or two lessons/activities for her as they are priced at £60-£360 (suzuki) a term. Just wondering what I should prioritise? Do any instruments or sports feature significantly in getting scholarships to good secondary schools? We live in East London if that colours opinion at all.

Thank you!

My girls are 6 and they do gymnastics, swimming and drama out of school. They used to do ballet but I they got fed up of it. I teach them piano, but that's quite ad hoc at the moment and they do recorder club at school. Three out of school activities is enough for us. We too missed out on Rainbows because we didn't know the right people and the waiting list at the other pack was too long.

I am waiting to see which they end up favouring. If they get good at gym, it will have to be that rather than anything else at some point because the club demands a lot of the kids who make the "squad". Drama is at our local (very good) theatre and that too gets more serious as they get older.

Oooo, as for cost, drama is £30 per term, gym works out at £4ish per session and swimming is £70 per term. Perhaps you need to shop around a bit?

thanks for all the very good advice everyone. I feel I have a much better perspective on the situation now. x

Am not bothering with Suzuki (money much too silly), have gone for piano lesson (no intrument rental) for now (with an eye on orchestral percussion) and cheap-ish tennis, basketball and gymnastics which I will prune this autumn as DD2 will deserve some attention at this point! . Nothing back from Rainbow people yet, they may all be full as well I guess.

Interesting points about summer holiday camp tasters will see what they have in my area.

Thank you all for your contributions x

I aimed for 30 minutes of practice a week at that age,

bloody hell, find some cheaper activities. Age 8 DD was doing up to 10 activities a week and I still spent far less than OP describes a single activity costs.

For the record, DD was doing
Brownies (£30/term)
Brownies gardening badge (transport and seed costs only, every other week)
Trampolening (£2/session, £24/term)
Swimming (£75/quarter)
Skating (£2/session, £24/term)
Gymnastics (£50/term)
Violin lessons in school (£150/yr with violin hire)
Horse riding fortnightly (£15/lesson, so £75/term)
One or 2 free in-school after school clubs

I make that out as approx. £300/term.

The big expenses I have been quoted are the suzuki music lessons which for (admittedly both) my children were £45 a week plus bus fare across town three times, so roughly £2K a year! The cheapest is now tennis which is a fabulous £2 a go.

Ballet was kicking in at £70-90 a term on the high end also. So even doing just those two activities was the equivalent of buying a second hand car.

Football is cheap, if either one gets into that. At least the practice & games are. It's the transport that adds up, although parents usually share lifts to spread the load.

lljkk. I don't think you live in London... No activities that inexpensive here apart from the Brownies! One DDs horse riding lessons £25 a week, other DDs violin lessons £300 a term (she has an private hour lesson with a highly qualified teacher, though). Both do lots of free clubs at school for their sport but one does Chess at £50 a term and the other does tap for £8.50 a lesson. These are also a lot less than other parents I know pay for similar activities.

Nope not in London.
But salaries in London supposed to be higher, too.
Forgot to put Judo on my big list for DD, that was £2.50 for 1-2.5 hour sessions.

Bit late to the thread but has she tried a Martial Art? Did you sign her up for Brownies?