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Which After-School Activities Are Best For Your Kids?

BY: Editors | Jul 26, 2019

Every parent wants to provide their kids with the opportunity to build a skill, develop a talent, or just have fun outside of school. But consider all the options: sports clinics, swimming lessons, martial arts, music lessons, dance classes, computer courses... How do you even begin to narrow the pool of after-school activities and craft a schedule that enriches your child without overwhelming them?

What follows is a guide to the many extracurricular activities and classes for kids, including which skills the activities help develop and how to tell if they're right for your family.

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Fitness Classes and Sports

This is for your kids if: they're a little high energy. And competitive. And seemingly indestructible. Those are all good things! Good, yet extremely tiring things... for you. What your child needs is an outlet for that boundless energy—something that will guarantee that they're ready to hit the hay the end of the day.

Skills they'll build:

  • Working with a team
  • Developing motor skills and coordination
  • Learning discipline
  • Establishing good exercise habits

Classes to try:

Performing Arts Classes

This is for your kids if: they like to express themselves, whether they dance, sing, play an instrument, or just have an active imagination. It makes sense to funnel that talent into after-school activities that grow their technical abilities while developing their confidence and poise.

Skills they'll build:

  • Establishing good practice habits
  • Exploring emotions and building empathy
  • Working with a group
  • Appearing in front of an audience

Classes to try:

 

Creative Arts Classes

This is for your kids if: You always figured you'd be mad when they drew on the walls, but they did such a good job, you halfway considered framing it. Now that they're old enough to have moved onto more acceptable media—be it colored pencil, paint, clay, or even digital photography—it's time to channel all that creativity.

Skills they'll build:

  • Developing imagination and creativity
  • Focusing on and completing a project
  • Expressing themselves artistically
  • Learning about composition, color, and other design principles

Classes to try:

Coding & Computer Classes

This is for your kids if: they know more about how your tablet works than you do. What better way to feed their technological prowess than enrolling them in fun—not to mention, ahem, career-oriented—coding and computer classes for kids?

Skills they'll build:

  • Using critical thinking to solve problems
  • Mastering digital literacy and technical competency
  • Learning new ways to channel creativity
  • Developing patience to stick with tricky problems

Classes to try:

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