Extracurricular is a combination of the Latin prefix extra – meaning “on the outside” and the word curriculum meaning “a running, course or career”, this implies that apart from the regular academic curriculum the child is involved in one or many activities like sports, science, art, theatre, journalism, photography, etc. pursuing an extracurricular aids the child in enrolment for higher education of his/her choice.
Though you might be familiar with the above facts; CHOOSING, MANAGING and BALANCING extracurricular with the regular academics is a difficult task, unless you make the right choice and just not take up an extracurricular based on the public popularity or peer pressure.
CHOOSING – parents must be wise and take into consideration the age and the child’s interests and inclination towards a particular activity, the perfect choice paves way to balance academics and extracurricular more efficiently. On this context I would like to share my experience on how I was able to guide and help my two sons in identifying their extracurricular. Both had opposite interests, while the elder had academic and mathematical skills, the younger was interested in sports and creativity. I engaged my elder son in yoga and abacus at the age four, a year later I found him doing better in abacus than yoga hence he continued with abacus, later when in 6th grade he joined football due to peer pressure but failed to perform which made him realize he lacked in physical activities. Familiar with his strengths I enrolled him for workshops in robotics but it did not interest him. He chose chess and later he discovered cubing, by the age of 14 his passion and extracurricular activity was cubing.
It was even more challenging to identify my younger son’s strength and interests, his interests shifting from drawing to dancing, from Hindi to abacus, and then finally settled down with theatre and table tennis, all these within the age of four to eight. Hence encouraging the strengths and interests of the child is important which facilitates managing and balancing extracurricular.
MANAGING – if you are hesitant to spend time and money on choosing the perfect extracurricular activities for your child, you can experiment with enrolling the child in various workshops where within a short time it’s easier for you and your child to discover his/her extracurricular activities. But beware that the child’s interests tends to shift quite frequently till his/her adolescence and be prepared to go along the flow.
BALANCING - if the child chooses his/her extracurricular perfectly, balancing regular academics and extracurricular would be a cakewalk. But a few things followed will make it easier, like having classes in close proximity to your home, also avoid enrolling them in more than two activities for it will save time and energy arising due to travel, and stress of class hopping which in time pressurises the child for all-round performance thus affecting his/her performance in both academics and extracurricular. He/she may be ‘Jack of all but master of none’.
A word of note; the child’s interest in an extracurricular may not be in your domain of knowledge or interest, hence this should not pose a hurdle to the child’s development in an extracurricular activity; like I neither possess any knowledge in cubing, theatre, table tennis nor am I an experienced writer but I am proud to learn from my sons on the knowledge they gain through their extracurricular, after all knowledge does not hurt.
Moving on to the current trend and future of extracurricular; there are many under and postgraduate courses where extracurricular can be pursued as the main subject of study thus expanding the perimeters of specialization and knowledge. Today we come across many young students with unique startup ventures, even people in their forties are dusting up their long lost extracurricular activity and making it as a profession and career, thus turning around their monotonous job and mental stress to loving their work and subsequent success, leading to a happy family and peaceful life.
