Kids' extracurriculars

[haveyoutriedturningitoffandthenonagain]

Inspired by another thread. What do your children do? I think mine does enough, I just want her to have a good life and she doesn't get tired. She's almost 7.

Dance one hour/week after school
Gymnastics one hour/week after school
Drama school 3 horus/week Sat

Sundays I like to do nothing but that's not allowed and we usually go to the park or swimming

My 7 year old does 30 minutes swimming lesson (Saturday), 45 minute kickboxing lesson (Tuesday after school) and 1 hour art club (Wednesday after school). I don't think that he would cope with more but other children may be fine.

My 6 year old:

Beavers and swimming two days after school

Football on Saturday

After school - gardening, football and multi sports - but he would otherwise be in after school club anyway (he goes there after his activity club) so I don't really count these.

He is only really tired after Beavers because it's later than he usually goes to bed, otherwise he could totally do another activity - it's really more our preference to have Sunday unscheduled to do other things

Those sound very nice schedules and activities.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s and had nothing. Nothing. Literally nothing. Just came home and chilled.

It's so different now.

I did quite a few activities in the 80s/90s - swimming, drama, musical instruments, orchestra, brownies etc

My just turned 8 year old does kickboxing, street dance, drama, beavers and plays football for a local team (training one night a week/games every second Sunday for most of the year). He's about to age out of Beavers so will be switching swimming back in as Cubs clashes with another activity he doesn't want to give up.

My 4 year old does Rainbows, Drama and Ballet. She wants to add an Acro dance class and has a Squirrels place after the Easter holidays.

At 7 my DD did Scouts for 1.5 hours a week, Circus School for an hour a week, afterschool handicrafts club 1 hour a week, and afterschool nature club 1 hour a week. It was a lot but she wanted to do them all but the next school year she dropped all the afterschool clubs.
12 now and she does volleyball for 3 hours a week, Circus school 1 hour, jujutsu 1 hour, and parkour 1 hour a week. I'm glad she does all these because they keep her active, as the rest of the time she doesn't want to do anything except laze around watching telly or reading or napping.

My 5 year old on the other hand does absolutely nothing, but there's not really much for his age where we live nowadays, just gymnastics.

5yr old

30mins gymnastics at school in the lunch hour on Mondays
30mins dance Friday evening
30min swim class on Sundays

To me that’s plenty- we soft play a lot, play dates, go to the park- she has a younger sibling too so I want them to be together and hang out. Ferrying kids to a millions places all week is ott imo. Sometimes kids just need to be silly and fill their own time.

3yr old has gymnastics twice a week and swimming 4 times a week so 6 hours, yet she’s still awake 🙄. I plan to give her access to as many extra curricular stuff as she likes/we can afford. I’m hoping she finds some stuff that will be lifelong passions for her, I don’t really have one apart from reading and I’d like her to have something she can enjoy as she gets older.

None. Ds is is after school childcare until gone 5pm 4 out of 5 week nights. So we can't really go to anything.

My 7 year old does beavers and then does swim training twice a week.
My 10 year old swim 6 hours a week and sometimes has competitions at weekends so that's all she has time for

Mine are 12 and 9 now and do:-

dd:- 6 hours official training for Sport A plus 1.5 hours strength exercises plus about 2 hours additional training. Plus competitions all over the country. She is at the high end of national level though so unusual.
1 hour of athletics
Netball, rounders, football, athletics and art club with school at lunch times plus regular matches as she is on many teams.

ds:- 3 hours of Sport A, 45 mins swimming, 1 hour tennis, 1 hour gym.

When Dd was 7 she did:-
1 hour of sport A (she had just started - our life was so easy in those days!)
2 hours of trampolining
1 hour of gym
1 hour swimming
1 hour brownies

When ds was 7 he did absolutely nothing as it was lockdown. Pre lockdown (so age 6.5) he did
1 hour gym
1 hour trampolining
30 mins swimming
1 hour football
1 hour tennis

We are a sporty family though. Dh and I were raised in the 80s and 90s and did loads of sports.

Fwiw my parents put me in loads of activities and all I enjoy now is.. reading!

I honestly think it's personality as much as anything - some people are "hobby people" and some aren't. I think DS1 is a hobby person and DS2 is not, he despises being in organised activities

It's good to give kids the opportunities though