Extracurricular activities offer enrichment for home schooled students and can complement or supplement their core curriculum. Extracurricular activities will provide additional learning experiences and contribute to the student's knowledge base through field trips, participation in music and art lessons. Students also benefit intellectually by learning through experiences. Therefore, adding various extracurricular activities to a home school program will provide additional opportunities to acquire new knowledge and develop skills that extend beyond the base subjects.
Many parents of home schooled students are concerned that their children are not getting enough diversity in their education, so seek to enhance their studies with extracurricular activities. Extracurricular involvement allows home schooled students to interact with people from various backgrounds and gain insight that develops their knowledge of the world around them. Participation in extracurricular activities can also expose home schooled students to new ideas and subjects that can contribute to their individual interests.
Extracurricular activities such as group sports and clubs offer home schooled students the opportunity to interact with other children in their age group. Structured socializing through extracurricular activities will help students develop better social skills, practice sportsmanship, understand how rules work in a social context and learn the values of cooperation and team work. Participation in structured social activities also leads to better character development for all students.
College admission personnel are impressed with students' involvement in extracurricular activities, since it demonstrates that the student has dimension. Colleges want to know that a student has challenged herself in areas other than academics. Including extracurricular activities on a college application increases the student's chances of being accepted. This is especially important for students who are home schooled since some colleges may be concerned that these students have not benefited from the educational and social experiences that attending school on campus provides.
Some great extracurricular activities for home schooled students include field trips; art, music, and theater classes; sports and dance teams; academic clubs and academic competitions such as the math Olympics, science bowl and academic decathlon.
Check with the school that is facilitating the activities for information on the level of involvement required for both the student and parents as requirements may differ for children who do not attend school on campus.
Make sure that the proper releases and emergency contact information are on file with the school that is facilitating the activities since most schools will only have files for the students who attend school on campus.
Find out which activities are offered by organizations in your area as some programs are not available everywhere.