Extracurricular activities are those that the student participates outside of classroom, after school hours. Parents encourage children to take-up extracurricular classes to enhance skills that the child never gets an opportunity to develop in the regular course of schooling. Children get an opportunity to discover and develop their hobbies in the field of sports, fine arts, music, technology, or any other field they wish to pursue.
Getting some extra time, aside from studies can do wonders for the child. They get a chance to meet new friends and develop social skills, they learn to become more confident individuals, and also foster self-identity. All this goes a long way in raising kids & teens with well-rounded personalities.
Here are some tips to choose the best extracurricular class for your children:
Find Out What Your Child Likes
Do more of what interests you. Doing something you love gives you happiness, besides getting better at it. The same applies for your children. Push them to play football if they find it interesting or take up acting classes, if they feel inspired to be on stage. Talk to your child’s class teacher and ask what activity your little kiddo is inclined towards. Maybe you would be surprised to discover, that your child is good at debating and if given an opportunity, would work towards refining his debate skills.
Offer Adult Guidance
As soon as children come home from school, they probably watch TV or play games on their phones. This unnecessary screen time adds no value and creates wrong habits. Adult intervention is important to steer them in the right direction. Give them options and encourage them to choose an extracurricular class of their interest. Sometimes they may opt for the same activity as their friends, to spend more time with their peers. Nothing wrong with this, unless both of them are getting to learn something new.
Multiple Extracurricular Classes
Discovering more than one passion is great. If children can be brilliant at Math and Language at the same time, why can’t they pursue their dream of learning calligraphy and gymnastics at the same time? This way they will not get bored of doing one thing and instead keep themselves occupied productively. Some schools host non-academic classes post school hours, to further enhance the student’s potential. With the IB culture taking shape in countries like GCC and UAE, competition is becoming more grueling, with each youngster outperforming the other.
Foster 21st Century Skills
It is a fact that we live in the digital world today, and to walk at the same pace as others we need to learn skills of the 21st century. The skills identified are; critical thinking, problem-solving, reasoning, and creativity, amongst others. Lego conducts after-school programs at local level to encourage children to learn robotics by making use of the LEGO ® Education SPIKE™ Prime solution and other STEAM based learning kits that are designed to sync with the school’s curriculum. If you reside anywhere in the Middle East, including Dubai, learn more about LEGO ® Education’s solutions by visiting our website https://shop.knowledge-hub.com/
Don’t Overdo It
The idea of extracurricular programs is to refresh the child’s mind and give him a break from monotonous studies. But what if the post school classes are further burdening them and causing exhaustion, such that there is no energy left by the end of the day? A back-to-back schedule on the weekdays and even packing the weekends with high-power extracurricular classes will do more harm to the child than any good. Therefore, parents must maintain a fine balance and not overdo it.
