Re: Late activities?


<praguejen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1146293281.951223.105720@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I've been keeping tabs on the sleep and older children thread, and am
personally quite amazed at how many extracurricular activities (even
for younger children) take place at what I consider to be eating
dinner/getting ready for bed time - i.e. after 7pm! Swimming, piano
lessons, etc....!!! Is this a normal thing in the US? It's definitely
not common here in the Czech Republic...all our activities take place
during the afternoon, and the latest we get home is after judo on
Thursday afternoon - we're home by 6 or 6:15. Evening activities are
VERY rare here.

Now, my son (3rd grade) is finished with school at noon or 1pm every
day - he starts at 8am - which I know is also quite different than in
the US. There is also a very strong program of state-subsidized
after-school care until 5pm, which most kids participate in to some
degree (and the fee is so nominal that it's laughable - approx $80 a
YEAR), during which most schools offer classes, such as dance,
computers, music, languages, etc.

Just very interesting for me the differences in culture - and not hard
to see why American kids are sleep-deprived. :)


Jen -

I think we do tend to have regular evening activities here in the US,
although I've noticed a difference between the area I lived in in Florida
and here in much more rural and snowy Vermont. I'm noticing that here in
Vermont many more activities that are not school sponsored still tend to be
scheduled for right after school. Examples would include Scouting, 4-H, and
similar activities. Even the church related youth programs I've encountered
tend to be scheduled much earlier in the evening than we are ready for at
our house [6pm]. [Since I don't even get home from work until about 5:15,
getting diner and off to those types of things is difficult.] In Florida
scouting, 4-H and similar programs tended to start at 6:30 or 7. I suspect
this was at least partly due to the probability that parents got home later
in the day [longer commutes] and we were closer to event locations than we
are in this area of Vermont. There may be other reasons as well, that's
just what comes to me at the moment.

I am always intrigued to hear how people in other parts of the world handle
the challenges of parenting and arranging life. Since school runs for your
children about four hours day, does their school year run longer than ours?
Or are there other factors that help your country keep the school day
shorter while still teaching everything? What kinds of activities do kids
participate in that are not related to academics or school sponsored sports
teams?

Nice to hear from you.

-Aula


.

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