The Importance of Extracurricular Activities

Importance of Extracurricular Activities for children

Extracurricular activities can greatly enhance your young child’s education. Sports and music, for example, can help kids develop passions and talents and teach them how to learn and how to push themselves. They provide structure to their daily schedules – after school on Mondays and Wednesdays you drive your child to soccer and on Tuesdays and Sundays there’s a piano lesson.

While these activities may seem to clutter up your schedule, they can serve important purposes in rounding out your child’s education. While you should likely veer away from over-scheduling your child, a great way to expose them to learning experiences that they will actually enjoy might be to enroll them in all kinds of extracurricular activities – and make it clear that they can drop the ones they do not like. Some parents over-enroll children in activities by encouraging them to try everything with an open mind, but, although allowing them to choose, require that as they grow up, they must play at least one sport and one instrument. 

Other extracurricular ideas

There are, of course, other extracurriculars for older children – debate teams, trivia teams, mathletes, model United Nations and traditional sports…. A crucial benefit to starting your child off with extracurricular activities at a younger age is that they are likely to maintain at least one or two of them into their teens. Extracurricular activities on college applications can show years of dedication or recent curiosity, but whichever they evidence, they are good qualities to see in an applicant, and, perhaps more importantly, in a person. They also keep teens out of trouble and focused, in addition to helping their education be more well-rounded.

Besides being a great way to socialize with peers, extracurriculars provide an outlet for high school students to better handle stress and learn time management.  Striving for more than excellence in academics provides a great life lesson. 

Related article: Life Skills Education!, Backyard Activities to Beat-the-Heat.