Weekday or weekend classes?

[JamMakingWannaBe]

DD is currently enrolled in pre-school gymnastics and swimming.

When she starts school after the summer, we have the choice of weekday (early evening after school) or weekend classes.

Which is best? Should we aim to keep weekends free for other/family activities?

They are definitely beginner/recreational classes rather than elite level!

If you can do weekdays i would do that. Mine mainly do weekend classes as i work 4 days a week and not back till 6pm so can't get them to weekday classes.

If you're around after school I would stick to weekdays - although she may be too tired when she first starts school for anything at any time.

It's nice to have weekends free for family time and hte constant round of parties.

We like to have activities scheduled in on Saturday mornings. They give a bit of structure to the weekend and give the child a runaround with low effort from the parent!! Plus DC can be knackered after school to start with.

I would avoid Sat pms and Sundays though.

if it is saturday mornings I would go with that myself but it depends on your lifestyle. If you like to go away for weekends or have visitors then you might end up missing sessions. After school is good in some ways as it does leave weekends free, enable a lie in (if you have compliant children of course!) but we end up missing sessions due to school trips not coming back until late, carol service, plays, parents evenings and so on. So both have good and bad points.

Definitely weekdays - weekend activities are such a bind! And something you probably will struggle to avoid as they get older so make the most of the flexibility now.

My DD wasn't too tired at all after school in foundation.

I don't mind our weekend swimming lessons - they're at 9am on a Sunday morning, so a time of day we're up anyway with the kids, and it gets it done and out of the way and back home before 10am so you don't lose too much of the day to be able to actually do something with it. They used to do gymnastics at like 2pm on a Saturday and that knocks the bulk of your day out of action really.

After school is OK - as long as the timings aren't too tight. We do an after school dance class and there's about 30 minutes turn around time between school finishing and the class starting and it's a wee bit too tight for comfort if they're dawdling.

Thanks for all your replies. The weekend class is 11:30am on a Sunday - which coincides with a yoga class I could do at the gym at the same time - but based on the advice given I'll stick to after-school so the weekends are kept free.