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Extra Curricular

This is kind of a funny topic for us.  Yes, we have curriculum.  Yes, we do school.  Yes, we do activities outside of school.  But so much of what we do is just "family time", and so it's hard for me to categorize it.   If we go to a Civil War Reenactment on a Sunday, is that just normal life stuff, or extra curricular?  Since it's just us...being a family... it feels like family time.  Just because it happens to coincide with the year we studied that topic...it sort of fits in with extra curricular.  Hmph.  Since we don't live life in a box with divisions of each thing we do, I'll have to just muddle through - much of what I do for most of life.

The kids are involved in a Children's Christmas Choir at church each year.  Beyond that, we've gotten away from evening activities that eat up our "family time" we have when Dave home with us.  Our ideal of creating family unity is just that.  It's an ideal that neither of us quite knows how to create, but one which is extremely important to us.  Reserving evenings so Dave can lay on the floor trying to fend off 4 kids who want to best him wrestling or so they each have time to show him the report or art project or read to him what they've learned - it's too important for us to let it slip away on activities outside of the home.  Therefore I don't have much to put on this site in the way of Extra Curricular Activities.

As a family, we all work together for Prolife activities.  Besides making music, videos, supporting our local Right to Life chapter and 40 Days For Life campaign, we also pray as a family to end abortion.  Some of it falls under the category of school (much learning goes into making a CD) and some of it is just family life for us.

A few years ago, we tried something different.  Rather than having field trips or library activities all over our schedule interrupting school, we set aside Wednesdays for that.  I know you've heard of this idea before.  I had too, but it just didn't work for us.  There were too many opportunities that were too good to pass up when it didn't fit into our schedule.  So, I didn't and I felt over-extended doing activities outside the home, whenever they occurred, and trying to come home, eat, clean AND get the kids to settle down to do school.  The reality was that after a morning out, I was too tired to organize teaching school.

So my friend Heather and I planned to MAKE opportunities for our kids on Wednesdays.  We came up with the Library Club.  Now every Wednesday afternoon is Library Club and Wednesday mornings are set aside for Science Co-op, field trips, play dates, or errands.