After school activities - am I over doing it?

On Mar 29, 7:08 pm, "AM" wrote:
Hi All:

I really appreciate your input. Right now, with the exception of kumon
(15-20 mins. a day) and occassionally violin, I don't make her
practice anything else. She gets it easily without trying too hard.
Anyway, she has time after school -- she does not get any homework.
She is made to sit in second-grade for language arts, spanish,
reading, and math, so I don't try to teach her much else at home. I
don't know what to do with her -- if she's not doing activities
outside of home, she gets too creative playing by herself -- one time
she set up a middle-age style laundry with a bucket, bat to pound
clothes, some salt+candle bits+oil mix (??) for soap of sorts, then
one time she was playing spa with peanut butter mask, and one time
made a sculpture with paper mache (made out of newspaper, glue,
glitter, flour, sugar and God knows what else), and what I am to do?
Instead of saying no to everything, I am trying to keep her busy...
well if she is not making these the out-of-the-world creative wonders
then she starts throwing amazing tantrums. What am I to do?

Personally, I'd encourage such activities. Creativity is something
that's often stifled in kids, when it should be encouraged. She sounds
very bright, let her explore where her mind will take her!

I'm not a fan of over-structured activities, however, I was like your
daughter as a kid. Drove my mom batty, but she gave me room to create,
for which I am always appreciative.

cjra wrote:

I'm not a fan of over-structured activities, however, I was like your
daughter as a kid. Drove my mom batty, but she gave me room to create,
for which I am always appreciative.

And it's not terribly to guide this creativity a
*little* bit, to avoid complete household destruction.
Friends have a room (really sort of a large closet near
their family room) that morphs into all sorts of different
things. Sometimes it's the "Art Lab" and is filled with
all sorts of basic arts and crafts materials. Sometimes
it's the "Lego Lab" (they have a huge collection, as one
kid is a major fan). Sometimes it's other things. By
changing it around every so often, it remains interesting
but provides a little structure for the creative outlet
and contains it from sprawling all over the house for
days on end. You wouldn't have to have a room--you could
just dedicate a specific area as a place where creations
wouldn't have to be dismantled each day.
Instead of spending as much money on activities,
you could use some of that money to put into basic supplies
to nurture the creative impulses she has. It's great that
she takes the initiative to use whatever you have around
the house, but sometimes it's safer (for all concerned ;-) )
if you provide some of the materials so that she can be
creative a little more safely.
She may also require a bit more personal supervision
if she's going off and doing things that you aren't
comfortable with. With two WOH parents, that may take some
doing if you're used to getting things done while she's
in these various activities. It's not a crime to involve
her in the things you need to do around the house as well.
She can go shopping with you (and learn a bit about math
and all sorts of other things). She can help out with
the housework and yardwork (and learn things, and make
it more fun for everyone). Life doesn't have to revolve
around keeping her in fun activities all the time.

Best wishes,
Ericka

On 29 Mar 2007 19:53:37 -0700, Caledonia wrote:
Barring power tools, I don't think a first grader can
possibly get too creative.)


Hey, what's wrong with small kids using power tools? ;-)

http://www.mulveyfamily.net/engineer.htm
http://www.mulveyfamily.net/powertools.htm

:-)

- Rich

--
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

Rosalie B. wrote:
Rosalie B. wrote:

Ericka Kammerer wrote:

AM wrote:
My first grader is doing ballet (45 mins/wk), tap (45 mins/wk),
classical vocal music (1 hr/wk), girls scout brownies (45 mins/wk),
swimming (2 hrs/wk), violin (45 mins/wk), soccer (1 hr/wk), kumon math
and reading (4 hrs/wk), painting (30 mins/wk) and bible school (2 hrs/
wk).

PS - I wonder about whether a child of this age should be doing
classical vocal music at all.

How age appropriate is that?.

This caught my eye as well. From my background in classical singing
through high school and college and a bit beyond, I would say that this
is not really appropriate at this age. Singing in a choir of some sort
is one thing, but private lessons at this age seems suspect. The voice
doesn't really become much of anything in the way of "classical" singing
until the teen years at the earliest. And there is always, no matter the
age or experience, a personal limit on the amount of singing (including
practice time, rehearsals, etc.) that any one voice should be doing in a
day.

Karen

ends. They'll have a week of Vacation Bible School and the
boys will have three weeks of dance camp. The boys will do
some swimming this summer, but that's about all they want
to do. Our school system is running this very cool Institute
for the Arts thing, but it's four weeks long and thought they
wanted to take the classes, they didn't want to take that big
a bite out of their summer :-( For DD, she'll do VBS and
then we'll play it by ear.

our church doesn't have a VBS as yet, I didn't even know what the
abbreviation was when they started asking for volunteers for VBS, I think we
are forming a comittee to look into having one, but I don't know if it will
get pulled together for this year, I've put my name down, so that should be
interesting!

I really need to investigate the dance stuff, I asked you about it a while
back, but an awful lot of stuff has happened since then, seems I hardly have
a moment and we're definitely not over scheduled!

Anne

Anne Rogers wrote:
ends. They'll have a week of Vacation Bible School and the
boys will have three weeks of dance camp. The boys will do
some swimming this summer, but that's about all they want
to do. Our school system is running this very cool Institute
for the Arts thing, but it's four weeks long and thought they
wanted to take the classes, they didn't want to take that big
a bite out of their summer :-( For DD, she'll do VBS and
then we'll play it by ear.

our church doesn't have a VBS as yet, I didn't even know what the
abbreviation was when they started asking for volunteers for VBS, I think we
are forming a comittee to look into having one, but I don't know if it will
get pulled together for this year, I've put my name down, so that should be
interesting!

It can be a lot of fun. There are lots of packaged
curricula out there, which likely make things a bunch easier,
especially if it's your first time. You might be a little behind
the curve if you try to pull one off this summer. It takes a
reasonable amount of time to plan, and I'm sure you're well aware
that when you're working with volunteer labor, things don't
always move at top speed ;-) If you'd like information on
some of the things we do, let me know. Our program seems to
be a big hit each year--we get kids from all over the area
(including dozens and dozens of other home churches) and we
get so full we end up turning kids away :-/

I really need to investigate the dance stuff, I asked you about it a while
back, but an awful lot of stuff has happened since then, seems I hardly have
a moment and we're definitely not over scheduled!

Good luck with that. We have a kind of unique dance
school here--it's pre-professional quality, but not affiliated
with a company and the Director has a rather unique, child-
friendly, community-centered approach. It's an odd combination
that I suspect isn't to be found most places, but it works
well for us (except when the loosey-goosey stuff gets to me ;-) ).
I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't expect it to be easy
to find the kind of laid back summer camp at very many places,
but maybe you'd get lucky!

Best wishes,
Ericka

It can be a lot of fun. There are lots of packaged
curricula out there, which likely make things a bunch easier,
especially if it's your first time. You might be a little behind
the curve if you try to pull one off this summer. It takes a
reasonable amount of time to plan, and I'm sure you're well aware
that when you're working with volunteer labor, things don't
always move at top speed ;-) If you'd like information on
some of the things we do, let me know. Our program seems to
be a big hit each year--we get kids from all over the area
(including dozens and dozens of other home churches) and we
get so full we end up turning kids away :-/

sounds great, I'm sure we'll be asking around all sorts of places, I don't
know who will volunteer or which staff member will oversee, but I suspect
most people will have been in the church for a while and hence not done one
recently if ever.

Good luck with that. We have a kind of unique dance
school here--it's pre-professional quality, but not affiliated
with a company and the Director has a rather unique, child-
friendly, community-centered approach. It's an odd combination
that I suspect isn't to be found most places, but it works
well for us (except when the loosey-goosey stuff gets to me ;-) ).
I guess what I'm saying is that I wouldn't expect it to be easy
to find the kind of laid back summer camp at very many places,
but maybe you'd get lucky!

our most local school is definitely similar quality, but I know nothing
about it beyond that, there are plenty of others that are also fairly close,
but I'm inclined to shoot for quality right from the start, I figure they
are more likely to be educated in good practice, less likely to over stretch
the children, more watchful of injuries and the like. I must try and figure
out who the parents of the girl at church I've seen wearing a t-shirt for
this school and quiz them on what it's like.

Anne

I'm the mom of three. I work outside the home, and each of our kids
has maybe three activities each (i.e. swimming lessons, brownies,
music lessons). Even with THREE kids, we have less activites on the go
than you.

I dunno how your daughter finds this, but it would kill me - and my
kids. Too much running around, not enough kicking back together, just
being a family, being kids, hanging out.

Just my 2 cents.

M.

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
...
This sounds a little bit like a troll to me because I don't really see
how a first grader could do all these things. My children had
activities out the wazoo, and even WE did not do so many things and
not in the first grade.


Rosalie, I agree with you. Red flags went up for me also. That's nearly 14
hours of activity on top of a school schedule.

Right now, my ds is in K and takes only one activity at a time. If he showed
strong interest in something else I would probably allow it but *I* don't
want to be overscheduled like that. I feel very, very strongly that kids
need unstructured playtime on a daily basis and there's no way the OP's kid
can get that with that schedule.

Ds just finished mini-mite hockey which was 2 hours a week. He's taking a
kids fitness class at my gym for 45 min./week for a 6 week session. Then
he's going to play lacrosse with the Y starting next friday for one
hour/week. The only thing I would like to change is to add a non-sport
activity but it just happens to be where his interests lie. I've tried
music, art, science classes but he just prefers the sports.

JennP.

"JennP." wrote:

"Rosalie B." wrote in message
.. .
This sounds a little bit like a troll to me because I don't really see
how a first grader could do all these things. My children had
activities out the wazoo, and even WE did not do so many things and
not in the first grade.


Rosalie, I agree with you. Red flags went up for me also. That's nearly 14
hours of activity on top of a school schedule.

I changed my mind when she posted a second time about why she
scheduled so much activity - not that I think that is necessarily the
way to go, but it wasn't just a hit and run.

I've been thinking about this. We moved to a different house (closer
to the school) when I was in kindergarten so I have a mental set point
for that time. At kindergarten age (and my mom was a WOHM and
kindergarten was a half day and not a whole day) which was in 1943 and
then later in first grade (1944) I was:

a) walking to and from school by myself (about 4 blocks).
b) I had a library card and we went once a week - I spent a LOT of
time reading.
c) I had a sister 2.5 years younger. I played school with her and
taught her everything (except how to write - I did it all orally) that
I had learned in school including all the songs I sang)
d) We had a dollhouse and we did imaginative play with that. My
sister used to walk around the dollhouse and take stuff out of it and
drop it on the floor and then the next circuit she would step on it
and break it, And I had two child dolls with jointed arms and legs and
they lost their arms and legs that way. I made up a story to account
for that.
e) I made up games that my sister and I played
f) I made up stories for her. I was a lot bigger than my sister, so
one of the stories I remember was that I was the (large) faithful dog
and my sister was the crippled little girl and she rode on my back.
g) I rode my bike, roller skated, played hopscotch and jumped rope and
played with my best friend in the next block
h) Brownies
i) Coloring in coloring books. I remember Kenneth teaching me how to
make pink out of red and white in kindergarten.

I was sick a lot in first grade and missed a lot of school until my
mom realized that the 'colds' that I got were never passed on to the
other members of the family and had me tested and found out that I had
a lot of allergies to things like pollen and animal dander. I also
had the normal (for then) childhood diseases.

My mom had a baby in 1945 that died within 3 days, and then she got
pregnant again - a very difficult pregnancy and was in bed for several
months, so we didn't do a lot during that period of time.

Afterwards, we went swimming (at least until the polio scares closed
the pools) and I know we had swimming classes at the Y. Occasionally
my sister and I could go horseback riding. And when we were a little
older we started going ice skating. My mom had us out of the house a
lot so that we didn't have to baby sit the (younger) children next
door who (she said) always had runny noses and who would poop on our
porch.

I do remember having art lessons one summer at the art museum (my
sister did not) but they were quite frustrating to me because we were
drawing outdoors and I couldn't make things look 'real'.

At some point, we started piano lessons in a class where we had desks
with cardboard keyboards, but I think that was a little later when my
sister was in kindergarten because my parents couldn't afford it until
then..

Right now, my ds is in K and takes only one activity at a time. If he showed
strong interest in something else I would probably allow it but *I* don't
want to be overscheduled like that. I feel very, very strongly that kids
need unstructured playtime on a daily basis and there's no way the OP's kid
can get that with that schedule.

Ds just finished mini-mite hockey which was 2 hours a week. He's taking a
kids fitness class at my gym for 45 min./week for a 6 week session. Then
he's going to play lacrosse with the Y starting next friday for one
hour/week. The only thing I would like to change is to add a non-sport
activity but it just happens to be where his interests lie. I've tried
music, art, science classes but he just prefers the sports.

JennP.