I have a gripe. A moan, if you will. It isn’t an uncommon one as I think most parents will at some point complain about what their school offers by way of extra curricular activities for primary age children.
My daughter is in Year 1 and there is nothing…I mean NOTHING for them. Before the year started, we were promised spanish lessons, french classes, tennis, cheerleading and so on. None of this materialised but by way of an apology, they offered morris dancing, and jazz dance, in school hours. My daughter does the jazz dance as it appears that it is mandatory.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a ‘tiger mom’ in any way, but I thought perhaps something different would be fun for her and it would only be a couple of half hours after school during the week. Alas, it is not meant to be.
Being musically inclined from the age of four, I often wondered if any of my children would follow my path and inherit my love of music as well as my pitch and ability to learn (not the ability to carry on as it would seem that I lack the motivation to move myself forward in this respect) so I dug out the huge Yamaha keyboards out for them to play. It boasts of the latest technology of it’s day, a 16 track digital recording studio onto…wait for it…FLOPPY DISC!
But I digress, the kids LOVED it, they make alot of noise but after sitting down with my daughter for two 10 minute sessions, she now knows where middle C is and four major chords. I am by no means a teacher but this fills me with confidence that she enjoyed what she was doing enough to be bothered to learn it.
Armed with this information I asked the school if they did something a bit easier, namely, the recorder. Oh no, they said, we don’t teach that until year 4! Year 4??! She’ll be eight! I finished with the recorder and was onto the piano by the time I was five! I told them this and was told that this particular council doesn’t offer anything like that until the children are older.
Pffft.
Because I have wandered past the threshold of remembering my youth clearly, I asked my mother for confirmation that I was indeed only 4 when I learned how to play the recorder and she replied that this was indeed so. I am miffed, there is nothing for my children to learn at this school bar morris dancing. I have taken to ordering what I think will be a fabulous book to teach ME how to teach my daughter to play the recorder and to learn the simple rudiments of reading music. I accept the challenge and await the grey hairs to appear on my head!
My question to you is this, what, if any, extra curricular activities do your schools provide for your children? Is there anything you’d really like but they don’t have? I look forward to reading your comments below.
The Homemaker 