And the fun starts again!

Now that the school kids are back in school in Tasmania, the "extracurricular" activities have started too (although the word is probably somewhat of a misnomer: given that we don't follow a curriculum as such, everything we do would technically be extracurricular, n'est-ce pas?).

I've read a lot about how children tend to be overscheduled, rushed from one adult directed enriching activity to the next, and are said to be suffering from lack of free play, downtime and unstructured time (here's a short article summarising this point of view). A recent television show depicted children getting up in the dark to do several sessions of sports training before school, and taking stress busting classes to deal with the resulting emotional overload. Sadly, there has actually been a special campaign running to get parents trying to spend just  21 minutes per day sitting and talking with their children in order to connect with them!


Related to this is the ongoing debate about what is the optimal amount of time for children to devote to all those extra activities that they love. Even in a comparative backwater like here, there are so many worthy activities on offer that we could easily use all of our time (and more than all of our money) on them. One of the great things about not having school to contend with is that we thereby free up 30 hours or more every week, so there's ample time for both structured and unstructured activities, at least in theory. But there's still the temptation to schedule in too many things. Every time I hear about any of the things other children are doing, I start thinking, "Wouldn't that be cool? The snowflakes would love that!" And then there's snowflake #2, who basically believes she will pine away and die if she doesn't get to take part in every activity she's ever heard of (currently very upset because she  isn't a Guide Dog puppy walker)...

Kelly the fun mum blogged about how her family found a better balance after taking some time out of extracurriculars. But our way of keeping the need for balance uppermost is to think in terms of unstructured time being an enrichment activity in itself, so our weekly rhythm is shaping up to look something like this:

Monday - Huon Intuitive Parents play meet, unstructured time
Tuesday - Storytime library group (#3, with #2 if she feels like it), gymnastics (#2), trampolining (#1), unstructured time
Wednesday - Girl Guides (#2), kung fu (#1), toddler gymnastics for #3 if we can fit it in, unstructured time
Thursday - swimming lessons (#1 and #2), unstructured time
Friday - home ed play meet once per month, unstructured time
Saturday - piano lessons (#1 and #2), unstructured time

I still sometimes struggle with the feeling that we're not providing them with enough opportunities. I'd love them to be able to to learn several musical instruments, do some dance and drama, participate in sports teams, pursue special interests like chess club or robotics, and so on. But there'll be plenty of time for these things. If they were doing them in order to become highly competitive, there would be the imperative to start young, work hard and put in the hours. But since we're following their interests and the fun factor, it's OK to do something for a while and then try something else another year.

I also have to occasionally remind myself that we can practice a hobby perfectly well without taking it up formally. We've been doing archery as a family, and we're learning lots even though we haven't joined a club or had any lessons.  There are lots of ways we can take up all kinds of activities without actually doing classes. As the snowflakes get older I'm looking forward to maybe swapping skills with other home educating families to help everyone learn what interests them.

ETA: check out this great post which talks about the possibilities of car-schooling on the way to classes. We do a bit of that too, when the snowflakes can stop squabbling about issues such as "She looked at me!" for long enough.