Extra-curricular Activities for Homeschoolers

Extra-curricular activities are not just ways to meet the ever controversial “socialization” issue, but they are also a terrific opportunity to build your child’s portfolio for college admissions. Let’s face it, we know that homeschoolers are much more “socialized” than the uninformed realize. With homeschool support groups, field trips, homeschool classes and community sports, homeschoolers often have far more opportunities than their public school counterparts.

In fact, if you read my article on The 7 Keys to Homeschool Success, you know that our family had the opposite problem–we were far too booked up with socialization activities.

However, extra-curricular activities are important, not just for a well-rounded child, but also for college applications and even scholarships! But what activities do you choose?

This will vary for every homeschooler and should take into account several considerations:

• What does my child want to do when he grows up?
• What colleges are we considering?
• What are his or her interests? talents? abilities? passions?
• How much time will this consume and will it fit our schedule?
• Are there benefits to this activity?

Why consider colleges and potential occupations? Because you can contact the colleges, find out what they look for, probe into scholarship opportunities for specific sports, clubs, or activities at the college, and ask if there are specific activities that they like to see on an application.

Common extra-curricular activities include:

• Sports teams
• Debate team
• Yearbook (with digital photos, this can be done quite easily on-line)
• Newspaper Club
• Writing Club
• Scouts
• Music–choir, band, etc.
• Photography
• Chess
• Science
• Drama
• Student Government (check out Student Governmental Affairs)

Many of these may seem like too much to organize, but with just a few families, you can put together a group of students and let them take it from there. We have a local homeschool drama club in our area completely run by homeschool students & parents. Their productions are amazing and their club has gained the respect of the community.

Check into your local 4-H club. There are many different opportunities through 4-H that provide outstanding instruction and activities for homeschool students.

If you have a specific interest for your child that would require professional instruction, don’t hesitate to contact your local provider and request homeschool classes. During our first year of homeschooling, we contacted our local swimming clubs, gymnastics club, ice rink, school of art, and karate classes and organized specific homeschool classes for our kids. By simply drawing on a few other homeschool families, we were able to meet the class sizes they wanted and obtain classes at a significant discount. Most of those classes are still meeting today.

When looking for opportunities for your kids, be proactive, don’t hesitate to ask, and give your older kids the reins. You will be pleasantly surprised at what they can do!

Jessica L. Parnell is a homechool consultant and evaluator as well as the principal of Bridgeway Homeschool Academy, a fully accredited international homeschool academy that has been serving the homeschool community since 1989.