My daughter is in 3rd grade now. She started swimming lesson when she was 3. She went to swimming team at 6, and made into list of final. She stopped lesson sometimes, because the schedule was too busy or she felt bored.
she started dancing at 3, too. Now she is taking lesson at professional ballet academy, she made progress every year--I mean she is accepted to return to higher level every year.( They really reject some students every year.)
And she skated for one year. I think this is her slower subject, we stopped becuse I had my second one at that time.
She went to art school for 3 months. She enjoyed it. Lots of parents told me, 'If I were you, I would send her to art school, instead of dancing." But all her drawing didn't benefit from the school. The teacher pay most of attention to old students, like 17,18 years old, who won lots of big rewards for their school.
She started piano at 4 and 1/2. She won city competition at 6. She chose to learn it at beginning, then of course she was bored by the boring practice every day. I made her stay longer for a while. And she got paid back. After she won the competition, she picked piano as her first choice, even she got a very tough teacher now. She said she wants to be a pianist. I am not suprised, I heard about her future as many as fireman, ballerina, and baker, cook, teacher. (She never wants to be a doctor, even very resist somehow. She asked my opinion, I said, maybe you can become a writer and artist, you write and draw your own book. She's happy with my answer.)
And she tried gymnastic for one lesson. Then she said it's too tired. So we quit. I paid non-refundable this fee that fee for just one lesson. I warned her, if you quit now, don't ever mention it to me later. Now it's been 4 years passed, she dares to mention it to me again.
And they are going to have some club at 3rd grade at school now, like "name the book", "spelling bee", "odysey of the mind". And she wants to join, too.
And she loves to read, loves to scibble, anywhere, anytime.
And I want her to have some free time every day, we can hang out, take a walk, play with her sister.
Last year, when she's going to have ballet recital, and piano recital, our family is kind of like in a war. I mean, we practice, and we run from school to school or to theater. Both of the teachers are very serious.
My problem is that we don't have that much time to satisfy all the subject. And money wise, I can not afford all of the subject either.
I ask my daughter's opion, she like them all. She told me to choose it for her. It's hard, how do you choose after school activity for your child?
She wants to go to audition for children's young artist concert. It's very very tough. I don't want to discourage her. She sets her mind to it. But it will require lots of practices, lots of sacrifices. Like she has to quit ballet lesson, which she stayed for 2 years at that professional academy, because they will pick student from the level( which my daughter is going to attend if she returns) to participate into christmas performance "Nutcracker"(real ticketed show, for whole season.If one student is picked, she has to go to rehearsal every night 4 to 5 hours besides regular lesson.)
I ask my father for his advise. My father asked about my obeservation on my daughter. My observation is; she would voluntarily read, read, read. She would scribble on any paper handy. If I remind her about piano thing, she would practice, if I didn't mention piano at all, she would forget it too. (She doesn't look like ready for concert to me, but she absolutaly doesn't agree with me.) And for ballet, if we forgot it, it's fine. If we were watching video of their observation lesson, both of us got excited again. The teacher really teach high quality lesson.
The advise I read about is' go by your child's interest. If a child has so many interest, and they are kind of like evenly spread out, which one to choose, which one to skip?
Like I told my father, my daughter is a "ok" student of every subject, she is not top 1 or top 2 student on teacher's list, but she is above average, on piano, on ballet, on swimming, on art. And she loves them all, and she told me," Mother, you can not seperate music, dance, and art, they are tightly connected, they are one whole thing."