Oh so many extracurricular activities. . .

One of the most asked questions of homeschooling families is “Aren’t you worried your kids won’t be socialized?” This cracks me up. After all, we don’t just sit around in our houses all day, every day. This week's blog cruise question is about extracurricular activities. It has been awhile since I have participated and I have to admit, I had kind of forgot about the cruise. I'm glad to be back this week with this question.

Extracurricular activities abound in our family. Sometimes, it seems like we engage in far too many of them. There are weeks when it seems like in trying to fit all of the extras in, we neglected to get to the main part of school. Thankfully, this doesn’t happen too often.

One of the great things about homeschooling is that we have time for the activities we like to do. My children are both into the arts. It isn’t hard for them to find time to practice what they are passionate about. For Griffin, it is guitar. He has been playing for about a year and is very good at it. He loves to learn new contemporary Christian music and is always serenading us. He has guitar lessons once a week.

Bella enjoys ballet and goes to lessons once a week. She loves this because she gets to see her “friends”. She is learning the sugar plum fairy dance from the Nutcracker right now to perform for Christmas. She is always twirling around and practicing her steps. She is a natural at this and does very well, also. This picture was taken after dancing at the mall for Christmas last year.

One day a week, we now go to a co-op that a friend of mine and I started. It is a lot of work to plan but the kids have so much fun. Right now the two classes we are doing are art and music. My friend and I teach art and another mom is teaching the recorder. This co-op lasts from 10:30 – 2:00 with time for lunch. I think lunch is the kids favorite part because they get to play with everyone. They usually bring basketballs or board games. It is so nice to see kids of all ages playing games together. There is hardly ever any problems between the kids. We will be taking a break from this during the Christmas season and then starting back in January to do the Presidential Challenge (physical fitness).

We go to church every Sunday and the kids are loving their new classes. Griffin is so excited about Reset which is his new class. They have a band that plays every week and he is in awe of the guitar players.

We also try to make a weekly trip to the library to get new and exciting books. While I look for things for school, the kids pick out their favorite topic on any given day.

We belong to a homeschool book club meets every other week. This is a time for the older kids to practice reading aloud in front of people and for the young ones to get extra reading practice. All of the kids read the same book aloud (taking turns) during the time together. We usually do a craft and have a snack that goes along with the chosen book.

These are just a few of the things we do outside of school work during the week. Homeschooling gives us the opportunity to do our school work and still have time to do the things we love. I thank God every day for allowing me to keep my children at home where we can learn together and still have time to be a family. I can’t imagine our lives any other way.

If you would like to read what other crew members have to say about Extracurricular activites, please visit the Homeschool Blogger page!