How do you know where to draw the line with activities and outings?

[SparklyUnicorn]

I feel torn between trying to get my kids out and about more and meeting others AND trying to get all the school stuff done.  They have their regular activities.  I'd like to have more free flowing less structured activities than we have currently, but these things happen at odd times.  For example, a park day on a Friday at 11.  Trying to get ready and out the door takes some time and the place is far.  Every time I say we'll do the work when we get back, that often does not happen.  If we don't get back until 3/4 the day is shot.  Nobody feels like doing anything.  These things are important, but the school work is important.

 

I just don't know how to find the right balance.

 

 

[regentrude]

We had found that balance by reserving every morning/early afternoon for school work, with the exception of one activity: park day every Thursday at noon (various locations, often 30+ minutes drive required).

All other activities had to happen after school work was done. We simply did not participate in any morning/early afternoon activities.

That still left plenty of stuff to do for the kids.

 

Like you, we could never successfully do school work after an outing.

[myfunnybunch]

You are singin' my song.

 

I wish I knew the answer. :P

 

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

We had found that balance by reserving every morning/early afternoon for school work, with the exception of one activity: park day every Thursday at noon (various locations, often 30+ minutes drive required).

All other activities had to happen after school work was done. We simply did not participate in any morning/early afternoon activities.

That still left plenty of stuff to do for the kids.

 

Like you, we could never successfully do school work after an outing.

 

It's hard.  I did plan one thing for the younger kid during the day.  He has a 11 am gymnastics class on Tuesday.  We have always schooled 4 days.  So the plan is one gets Monday off and the other Tuesday to work around that gym class.  They both have something on Monday night.  One has something on Wednesday night.  And one has something on Saturday morning. 

 

I can't seem to find anything that's a non structured hang out thing at times that work.  Nobody does it for after school hours.

 

So I guess that kinda answers my question, but I still feel bad. 

 

Ugh...can't win.  There are no kids in the neighborhood.  We often do go to the park up the street, but hardly anyone is there or it's just little little kids so that's not working so well anymore. 

[fairfarmhand]

Mornings are for school. We have ONE DAY A MONTH that we violate this rule for our monthly school support group. Otherwise, we're like you, school doesnt happen in the afternoon.
 

 

Can you double up on certain lessons the day before as to not lose a full day?

 

Can you lay everything out so that you can get ready quicker? I think my kids are lousy at getting ready and out the doo r quickly because they don't have to do it every day.

 

Can you get everyone ready first thing and then sit down to do an hour of school before you leave?

 

Are you sleeping past 8? If we are sleeping too late, we won't be up for getting out of the house by 11 am because the "getting started in the morning" routine will take too long.

[regentrude]

It's hard.  I did plan one thing for the younger kid during the day.  He has a 11 am gymnastics class on Tuesday.  We have always schooled 4 days.  So the plan is one gets Monday off and the other Tuesday to work around that gym class.  They both have something on Monday night.  One has something on Wednesday night.  And one has something on Saturday morning. 

 

I can't seem to find anything that's a non structured hang out thing at times that work.  Nobody does it for after school hours.

 

Ugh...can't win.  There are no kids in the neighborhood.  We often do go to the park up the street, but hardly anyone is there or it's just little little kids so that's not working so well anymore. 

 

I'm not sure I understand. Non-structured hangout can happen at any time, at home.

 

My kids have met other kids through their activities. DS found friends at the once-a-week homeschool park day. We just invited them to hang out at our house at times that worked for everybody. He made more friends through his sports.

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

I'm not sure I understand. Non-structured hangout can happen at any time, at home.

 

My kids have met other kids through their activities. DS found friends at the once-a-week homeschool park day. We just invited them to hang out at our house at times that worked for everybody. He made more friends through his sports.

 

 

Specifically I'd like to offer them more opportunities to hang out with other kids.  All the activities they do are structured and there is little time to meet others.  Yes they are with others, but they haven't formed any friendships that way because the activities are so highly structured.

 

We have no kids in the neighborhood. 

 

Although I guess kids in general around here are in school all day and early evening and it's all mostly highly structured.  I signed them up for a local boys and girls club thinking that would help, but everything they do there is highly structured.  They rotate them through activities they have no choice over.  Stuff like homework room which was pointless.  So they hated that. 

 

 

[SparklyUnicorn]

Yeah with schooling only 4 days per week we have to make those days count.  11 just won't work.  It's not enough.  We start by 8 usually, but that leaves about 2 hours.  And that's not enough.

 

So I guess it is what it is. 

[Scarlett]

We try to get all school work done by Thursday evening.  That leaves Friday for whatever it needs to be for.  Or if something comes up during the week Friday can be catch up.  

 

This doesn't always work.  Because 15 year olds sometimes don't manage their time very well.

[SKL]

Right now, I've designated one day a week for kid's self-chosen fun, and one day for mom's choice (could be any combination of school, chores, fun outing, or unstructured time).  The other 5 days are pretty much school, sports, and a little time for play.  It might not be ideal, but it's unrealistic for us to be too loosey-goosey on school days.

[myfunnybunch]

Sparkly, one of the ways my kids formed friendships through their activities was by seeing if friends were available to hang out during the school/activity breaks. We'd do something informal--arcade, mini-golf, bowling and pizza. That helped the parents feel more comfortable with our family before inviting them to hang out at our house.

 

I do find that our homeschool friends are more flexible timewise, even after school, but the boys do get some informal hang-out time now. it's a lot of work for me, though. Once we found a couple like-minded families looking for less structured time, we really worked on finding time and protecting that time.

[SKL]

What would your kids do with the other kids if you could find time for it?

 

What are the other kids doing on the weekends?

[Guest]

I'm bad about this, because I tend to say no to everything or say yes to everything. My basic rule is that school must be done, at least a half day in core subjects. So anything before noon is pretty much off the table. I relax this in summer and over the Christmas holiday break. But we have so many activities in the afternoon and co op on Fridays that there just isn't room for a whole lot of spontaneous activity with other families.

 

That's okay.

[SKL]

What about a jr bowling league or something like that?

[Ellie]

I feel torn between trying to get my kids out and about more and meeting others AND trying to get all the school stuff done.  They have their regular activities.  I'd like to have more free flowing less structured activities than we have currently, but these things happen at odd times.  For example, a park day on a Friday at 11.  Trying to get ready and out the door takes some time and the place is far.  Every time I say we'll do the work when we get back, that often does not happen.  If we don't get back until 3/4 the day is shot.  Nobody feels like doing anything.  These things are important, but the school work is important.

 

I just don't know how to find the right balance.

 

This is what we did:

 

No outings with anyone else before 3 in the afternoon, Monday through Thursday. No field trips, no classes, no homeschool sports/dance/whatever, no appointments. Just...no. We left the house every Thursday for a field trip; sometimes I invited others to go with us, but mostly it was just us. We went to the library every Wednesday; sometimes we would visit with friends in the afternoon, but it was informal and unscheduled. I would do a field trip with my support group only if it were scheduled on a Thursday. We cleaned house on Friday, and went to a monthly park day.

 

That is all.

[catz]

This is a hard problem!  Since my oldest hit about age 11/12, I have worked really hard NOT to have anything regularly scheduled for the morning.  We will do the one off theater production or orchestra concert with a homeschool group if I think it's enriching to what we're doing.  We do co-op one day a week, but that is mostly academic for my oldest, and even marginally so for my younger. 

 

Anyway - mornings at home have become sacred.  If we do not get stuff done by about 1 or so, stuff seems to take way longer too.  This year we're actually doing a school on the road/music lesson day that's going to have us leaving the house about 11.  Kids will need to be packing laptops/school work and finish up while they're not in a lesson.  We'll see how that goes. 

[happypamama]

It's a pretty easy choice for me because I have several littles still, and I live at least half an hour from everything. In order to homeschool, we need to be home. Going out one day a week for martial arts class and other short errands cuts our school time enough. In fact, I just started going grocery shopping by myself some evening or weekend day because going grocery shopping plus errands plus martial arts made our day way too long and tiring. It's hard to school four days a week with older children and still have any flexibility throughout the year for days off. Now, my older children have a couple of subjects they can get done that day.

 

We occasionally do a second day out, especially if it's a short one, but we don't do them every week. We really, really try to make it four days at home most weeks and limit the extra outings to those which are really, really special.

 

And whether we do work on outings or not will depend on the outing. If a trip is scheduled from 11-12, for instance, that means we leave around 10:15 and get home around 12:45. If I'm on the ball and pack lunch so we can eat on the way home, and we don't have other errands, then we can easily get work done afterward, and possibly before as well. (Or I'll use that morning to let everyone sleep in a bit and relax, with schoolwork happening in the afternoon.)

[Miss Tick]

We are trying out a co-op this year partly for those reasons, to spend some unstructured time with other kids and to meet other kids we can potentially get together with at more convenient times. Anticipating that no school work will get done afterwards, I've moved our weekly library trip to follow it. The library is another day-ending activity for us, so I am happy to combine them.

 

Can you you make Friday morning and Tuesday morning add up to a school day? So you have 3 full and 2 ½ days? It's there one subject you could do at dinner or a weekend morning during "park day season"?

[LucyStoner]

Many of our activities are *part* their education. We take a hybrid approach for a few reasons:

 

-I do not have the inclination, skill or time to teach everything they want to learn.

 

-I have two kids, including one with ASD, who specifically need group social settings so as to practice skills that don't necessarily come naturally.

 

-My sons are 6 grades apart and need to be working away from each other at times.

 

We end up doing a lot of our work out at the library or park anyways and often I will work with one while the other is in a class or activity.

 

I won't sign up for things out of the house or schedule appointments on certain days. That helps.

[2ndGenHomeschooler]

This year we are trying a 6 day a week school schedule (M-S). From breakfast until lunch every day (approximately 8am-noon) will be set aside for learning something. Some days that will look more like "school", other days it will look more like nature walks, documentaries, and art. This schedule meant that I had to move all of MY stuff out of the morning hours - no more errands on Friday mornings, no more piano lessons before lunch, voice lessons and appointments moved to the afternoon.

 

I decided though that the new schedule DID allow me to keep a couple of the kids' morning activities. We'll keep the homeschool karate class on Tuesday morning and ASL class on Wednesday mornings. We view these classes as a very important part of their education and these classes best fit our schedule/budget. We will have a little school time before we leave, a little when we get home, and I hope to make good use of our time in the car too.

 

The afternoons will primarily be for my activities although the older two will still have evening piano lessons and the younger two will have evening soccer practices for a couple of months.

 

I really hope this scheduling works. We start back to school on the 14th so we'll see.

[Stratford]

This is a struggle for us.  (Says the idiot mom who scheduled an orthodontist appointment at 10am on our first day of school.  Oops.)

 

We are learning to deal with interruptions in our day.  The kids are doing well with it.  Youngest has preschool 2 mornings a week (we stay at the preschool and bring schoolwork to do in their lovely, empty basement rec room.)  Oldest has band every other day with the public school (we use that time for running errands, eliminating the need to go out in the morning.)  Coop is every other week and we count that as school for the day.  I've tried to move extracurriculars to evening times only.  We try to keep a chunk of solid time each day to be at home and do school, and so far, it's working.  The olders in particular are starting to understand how to maximize school time, rather than dragging everything out over the entire day.  I think, though, that learning to schedule around life stuff and interruptions is a valuable skill.  It's certainly something I've had to learn as an adult.  

[MEmama]

I struggle with this too. We have so few opportunities that are academic enough to truly interest him, and the few--it's so, so rare--pose their own issues. Like others have mentioned, they tend to occur mid morning which blows our entire day. He just nixed one opportunity (astronomy even!) because as he put it, he would "rather do real work" than waste his time.

 

Thank goodness he does sports and has made a few friends that way. I don't know what we would do otherwise.

[Rosie_0801]

We have to fit school in wherever it fits, these days, so we're getting better at doing school at odd hours. Yesterday we did a few things that didn't require too much thinking while breakfast cooked, and got some more done before we had to go out. We packed the rest to do at the library in the next town between activities.

 

It might be too hard to do heavy subjects in the afternoons, but you might be able to do read aloud subjects. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. 

 

Of course I only have one kid. I didn't used to have the energy to pull this off.

[texasmama]

Before high school, we scheduled our core academics only Mon-Thurs. we attended a co-op on Fri morning and had Friday afternoon free. It was a nice balance. The kids all did a sport if they wanted in addition. We were never huge field trip folks, but we liked to go places sometimes on Friday afternoon and scheduling academics for four days a week opened this time up.

[73349]

Is getting up earlier on Fridays an option?

 

DS is much quicker to start school if he wants to get somewhere at a certain time.

[SparklyUnicorn]

That sounds familiar :). 

 

It's hard to strike a balance, I find. The alternative is that I say we'll finish it on Sunday. That never happens either :). These social things also have value, but they mess the routine up pretty severely. 

 

Well, that was useful, wasn't it? I don't have a clue about this either.

 

Yeah they have something going on on Saturdays.  So that's not an option.  And then that leaves Sunday which really is "my" only day off from going going going. 

 

Eh well..they have enough going on.  I'll just deal.

[Dmmetler]

When I dropped a one day/week co-op to allow more time for academics, after a semester DD10 offered to do "homework"-to shift some of her independent work to at night on her own time, instead of reading for fun or playing on her computer or building with Legos to allow time for co-op. I told her we'll try it, and the Spring semester was successful. So far, it seems to be working this fall as well, and as long as the work is done satisfactorily, I'm find with her setting her own schedule.

 

As far as other stuff, I don't schedule anything before early afternoon, which means usually not doing "homeschool" specific activities as opposed to stuff for kids who are in B&M schools. We do sometimes visit museums, etc, but we do it at 2:00 or so, which lets us get pretty far in before B&M schools let out (and usually be done before it starts to get crowded.

[SparklyUnicorn]

When I dropped a one day/week co-op to allow more time for academics, after a semester DD10 offered to do "homework"-to shift some of her independent work to at night on her own time, instead of reading for fun or playing on her computer or building with Legos to allow time for co-op. I told her we'll try it, and the Spring semester was successful. So far, it seems to be working this fall as well, and as long as the work is done satisfactorily, I'm find with her setting her own schedule.

 

As far as other stuff, I don't schedule anything before early afternoon, which means usually not doing "homeschool" specific activities as opposed to stuff for kids who are in B&M schools. We do sometimes visit museums, etc, but we do it at 2:00 or so, which lets us get pretty far in before B&M schools let out (and usually be done before it starts to get crowded.

 

Yeah maybe what I'll do is try to start my own gathering thing at a time that works better and see who shows up. 

[Seasider]

I feel torn between trying to get my kids out and about more and meeting others AND trying to get all the school stuff done.  They have their regular activities.  I'd like to have more free flowing less structured activities than we have currently, but these things happen at odd times.  For example, a park day on a Friday at 11.  Trying to get ready and out the door takes some time and the place is far.  Every time I say we'll do the work when we get back, that often does not happen.  If we don't get back until 3/4 the day is shot.  Nobody feels like doing anything.  These things are important, but the school work is important.

 

I just don't know how to find the right balance.

 

 

For a distant Friday morning park day that also required me to plan and pack lunch, my kids had to add one of Friday's assignments to each previous day, M-Th. That way there was little left for Friday and we didn't get behind.

 

I am with you on other days, though. We really need to get up and *really* busy earlier than usual. We tend to ease into our mornings (see sleepless/menopausal threads...). I really hate midday activities, and if I had my preference, no activities would happen outside the house before about 230pm. But, we make it work, because the things we do are good enrichments to our other schoolwork.

 

Let me know if any of you find the easy button. 

[Ellie]

Many of our activities are *part* their education. We take a hybrid approach for a few reasons:

 

-I do not have the inclination, skill or time to teach everything they want to learn.

 

-I have two kids, including one with ASD, who specifically need group social settings so as to practice skills that don't necessarily come naturally.

 

-My sons are 6 grades apart and need to be working away from each other at times.

 

We end up doing a lot of our work out at the library or park anyways and often I will work with one while the other is in a class or activity.

 

I won't sign up for things out of the house or schedule appointments on certain days. That helps.

 

They were part of my dc's education, too, but I still wouldn't give up mornings at home. My dds did ballet, Scottish Highland dance, 4-H, marching band, soccer, and Camp Fire. We gave up Wednesdays for a couple of years so they could participate in an excellent homeschool choir, but that was the only year we did homeschool-focused activities. My dds were in community activities, which were scheduled in the afternoons after school was out (except for Camp Fire, which we did as independents). That gave us all day to do our own thing without pressure, plus enjoy our other activities.

[SparklyUnicorn]

It would be one thing if this was an ongoing thing that was always the same time.  This really is something where...do I drop everything to do that this week and it might be a different time next week?  So yeah I guess I have answered my own question here.  There are just so many hours in the day to get stuff done.  And I'm only one person doing it all. 

[mamiof5]

I also struggle with this. Our kids attend a public school for homeschoolers once a week, and we belong to a wonderful homeschooling group in which there is a good activity at least once a week. If we do a field trip every week we are left with 3 days for our stuff at home. Also trying to find a method, since rarely ever Saturday is a full school day, since we do chores that day.

[catz]

Yeah maybe what I'll do is try to start my own gathering thing at a time that works better and see who shows up. 

 

:iagree: Yes, this exactly.  I was going to say this is what I did to get my kids some unstructured time.  I'm running a small unstructured group now that has a core of 5-6 families and I keep saying if we need to move from afternoon meetup, I'm out.  So we're still going a number of years.  And I actually really enjoy that time to connect with other parents and have some adult conversations.  The kids in this group are super tight now.  It's really nice. 

 

The other daytime stuff we do, I do generally consider part of school for us. 

 

[Arcadia]

For example, a park day on a Friday at 11. Trying to get ready and out the door takes some time and the place is far. Every time I say we'll do the work when we get back, that often does not happen.

If we are going out on Friday for a park day or any event, kids do Friday's work on Thursday night after dinner. So deadline just get adjusted earlier. My boys are used to waking up early and sleeping in the car on the way to activities though.

[FriedClams]

This is our first year with anything early, other than piano from 1:30-3. DD is a freshman and is in a coop class for the first time. It meets from 11:30-1:30 on piano day. I drive there, picking up 3 extra kids, and another mom picks up and drops DD at piano. It works ok, but only because it's very academic, well run, and carpooling helps.

 

When the kids were younger we would make Fridays lighter. I never did coops or anything like that because it meant losing a day for social time. I'd rather school hard, and then travel hard. Taking days here and there is super frustrating for me and makes me feel like we never get traction.

 

That said, we have activities Monday through Friday night's after 5...and sometimes weekend.

[LucyStoner]

They were part of my dc's education, too, but I still wouldn't give up mornings at home. My dds did ballet, Scottish Highland dance, 4-H, marching band, soccer, and Camp Fire. We gave up Wednesdays for a couple of years so they could participate in an excellent homeschool choir, but that was the only year we did homeschool-focused activities. My dds were in community activities, which were scheduled in the afternoons after school was out (except for Camp Fire, which we did as independents). That gave us all day to do our own thing without pressure, plus enjoy our other activities.

See, I'm exactly the reverse. If I am choosing what makes me happier, it's being home in the late afternoon and evening rather than in the morning. My husband and I place a high value on family time that isn't go-go-go and on being able to put a homemade meal on the table and all eat together whenever possible.  These days, things that might have been scheduled for RIGHT after school are often scheduled for the evenings because that is when working parent families are home to take them, so it's not a 3:30 or 4:30 thing but a 6:30 or 7:30 thing.  

 

I am pretty much loathe to do any evening activities unless there is no other equal daytime option. Something has to only be available in the evening AND very important to one of the kids for us to commit to attending anything after 4pm. Preferably we are home by 4, at the very latest. Thus far that is 6 evenings a month out of the house for scouts and a 1 hour sports practice. These are very close to our home and we can usually eat dinner before or after. I resigned from (and decline any offers) for evening committee meetings, political meetings or board opportunities that meet in the evening. That was a significant change for me as I used to sit in multiple boards and was an executive officer for a local political party but it restored my sanity and allows us to focus more on kids and family at this stage of life-- community and political work will still be there after the kids are nearly grown and don't want or need that time as much. And I can give myself much more joyfully to the 1-2 things in that vein I can do during the day. My only exception is skating but that starts AFTER the kids are in bed. I opted not to pursue a derby league that would have meant practicing from 6-10pm at least once a week.

 

ETA: also, we don't just have extracurriculars as our activities.  My older son has taken classes in everything from mandarin to math to astronomy to poetry.  Besides outsourcing most art and music and things like sports and scouts, there are so many great academic classes available to them that we take full advantage of.  My older son's main out of home class times are Friday mornings and Saturday mornings this term but it varies.  

[laundrycrisis]

After years of wanting to do it, I finally did it - NO daytime social activities.  NONE !!!  There is one day when we go to violin lessons - not social !  and one day with two co-op classes per kid - and these are academically beneficial classes.  And DS1 goes to orchestra at the middle school for one hour each afternoon - this is very good for his music study, and the hard structure imposed on our day has been very helpful so far. 

 

We will not be attending any homeschool field trips, park days, or any other social homeschool event.  We are also no longer in homeschool gym or sports activities, or any homeschool anything, except the one day of co-op.  I dropped one class completely and moved another to be an evening activity.  We are staying home and getting school done - yay !!!!!  School has become much less stressful, now that we can actually get it done like people instead of robots. 

 

The time left for making friends outside of the co-op is after school and on weekends.  I don't know that we will end up with many, but we didn't have many before - at least not people who we would regularly see outside of school hours.  We get what we get.  They like the afternoon/evening activities they do and they like the kids at those things.  And we all like each other and stay pretty busy.  I am done burning up school time for social time.  The stress around school not being able to happen due to being overly busy was not worth it. 

 

[KungFuPanda]

We NEVER managed to do schoolwork after an outing. I learned to finish the school day before we left the house. Generally my kids activities didn't start until 2, so it worked out. As the get older, the activities are more in the late afternoon or early evening, so that's nice. We could never get back into a school mode when we came home from anything. Everyone wanted alone time then.

[samba]

There is no set line. Things change - a focus on relationships this year, buckling down to do academics the next.

 

Are we both happy ? Are we getting the basics done ? Can we afford this ? Are our goals being met, and if not, do the goals need to change or do we ?

 

 

 

For the past several years, we've stayed at home 4 mornings a week with one day for all outside daytime activities (music lessons, co-op class).  That has worked well.  Now, this is our paradigm.  Thanks, Sadie!  You expressed it well.

[Katy]

I try to do school school in the morning, extras & fun in the afternoons.  And I'm not sure there's any set formula to decide how much you want to do.  As long as it's equitable between kids, the amount of activity and driving around and playdates and everything else you tolerate is going to vary a lot based on your level of extroversion, how far you live from other kids, and your own goals for YOU.

 

If I were you I'd ask everyone to think about what they want, talk to you about it, and then take like a week to decide.  And decide for only the fall, for this set of activities.  Reevaluate for winter sports & holidays.

[Sherry in OH]

Our regular schedule is irregular.  I plan each subject separately to be do the next thing.  I prioritize math, language arts, and piano.  We do those subjects every weekday we are home.  We rotate through other subjects.  That means that science might be studied Monday and Thursday one week and Tuesday and Friday the next.  The following week it might be once or not at all. 

 

When we stopped attending a distant science class midway through last year, I missed the drive.  Not because I like driving, but because we used that time to listen to audiobooks.  Three hours of audiobooks plus a class and an hour or so exploring a museum is a full day of learning. 

 

I am selective about what I will and will not schedule around.  A purely social event is unlikely to make the cut.  But, if park days were an option and I thought my children needed the interaction, I would schedule other trips for the same day.  Turn it into library and park day or park and errand day. 

[kewb]

If I have a morning activity planned I know school work won't be happening that day. I factor that in to our plans for the week.

As my kids got older and into high school they have the choice of school work when they get home or they will be completing assignments over the weekend.

[katilac]

How old are your kids? Midday park outings can be well worth it for elementary kids, but unworkable for high schoolers. 

 

Is there a specific reason for the 4-day work week? If not, you might school 5 days a week in order to have wiggle room for park days and such. 

 

How long is your school year? A longer school year can give you more wiggle room also. 

 

We have always done a longer school year, with the exception of one experimental year. In the earlier years, it let us take frequent days for outings and such. Now that they're in high school, mid-week outings are much less frequent, but their days are shorter than they would be on a typical schedule - they prefer having consistent time to call their own rather than a full summer off. 

 

It's a matter of what you prefer as a family (or what mom prefers, if there's not agreement, lol). Do you need or like the 4-day schedule, or would it be easier to do 5 days and be able to say yes to more outings? Do the kids have other chances to be at a playground with other kids, or is park day the best opportunity? 

[IfIOnly]

Our activities take place after school, weekends, and in the evening. I think we could swing something outside of the home for a few hours one school day a week and just do the 3 R's that day, though. 

[EmseB]

I was just having this discussion with my hubby the other night.  We do a once-per-week co-op which is 9-1 with all the kids and that's it.  My older kids do classes at co-op, but it's nothing intensive enough to count it as a full subject.  We'll probably do a sport after school, but during school, missing one day a week is all I can manage without going nuts.  But, at co-op I was listening to some conversations where other moms were talking about doing co-op, plus adding Classical Conversations (another 9-1 type deal), plus going to a park day on another day of the week.  I suspect or hope these moms have younger kids than I do because I don't know how one would get a meaningful amount of school done with those kinds of activities.  A lady at church invited me to women's Bible study (Wednesdays at 9:30 a.m.) and I said, "Oh, we are doing school at that time, sorry I won't be able to make it," and she completely got it.  Some people assume I can do stuff during the week because we homeschool, but the thing is that we actually are doing school all morning most mornings.

 

There's a lot of good stuff out there, but I would just pick one day per week to be out of the house and just draw the line.  Afterschool sports are a bit of a different animal that I haven't had to reign in because my boys are close enough in age and want to do stuff together so I just sign them up for the same sport and call it good.

 

 

[SporkUK]

Personally, I now no longer do anything that involves going out before 2pm regularly. I need my mornings, my partner works nights so anything that requires us both to be involved won't happen regularly before 3pm anyways, and it just doesn't work for us anymore. I might consider it again if family BSL came back as we had a lot of support there, but I physically cannot handle it with lessons as well with the kids getting older. While I may take the kids to the park for physical or nature activities or just play by themselves, it's a special event like the annual science fair at the local college that gets me to agree to meet and be social with people in the morning. 

 

As a family, we've found we're more likely to enjoy and continue regular social unstructured activities if we arrange them at people's homes. Several HE kids in the area made a club and got a parent to agree to host and it's been going for about 2 years now - mine spend almost every Monday their with their dad just doing what they want mostly. We have the group here irregularly. My partner and I run a group for our adult friends here twice a week in the evenings after the kids go to bed. Park and softplay and other out of house meetups are rather rare for us these days - they're more for special events. The only not home based regular activity is Cadets and Badgers which is obviously evening based and quite structured...which reminds me, that starts up next week so I really need to sew on those badges...