How many outside activities are your children involved in?

I didn’t have time to read all the comments, but just want to say a couple of things. You are living my dream in the country ( especially the part about raising chickens :). My 3 are teens now and we have been limited for several years in the amount of activities we participate in. They have learned to be friends with each other. We have been in a homeschool co-op for the last 3 years and I’m pleased because we found a really good group of families in this co-op. My kids also participate in the local 4H. Living in town we don’t do the animal aspects of 4H, but they have learned so much doing this. Over the years they have participated in horseback riding club, skeet/trap shooting club, sewing club, archery club, robotics club, and entered various competitions through 4H. Overall it has been a good experience for them. I know that sounds like a lot, but the activities are only once a month and they don’t each do all of those things every month. One likes robotics, one likes sewing, two like horse club, etc.

I would suggest asking other homeschoolers in your area if they would like to meet at a park for a couple of hours to play and picnic. Sometimes others are just waiting for someone to ask. I think the key thing to remember is that when looking for social activities you need to keep in mind the character of the people you allow your children to interact with. I’ve had situations where I could see the negative influences someone had on one of my children and had to limit interaction with that person for the benefit of my child. That said, the public school offerings may not be the best situation for your children depending on the situation there.

The best thing I’ve done to find the right balance and the right activities is to pray about it :). And my teens are able to socialize with lots of ages of people, from little children to the elderly, because they have always been around various ages of people. They all like bing with the younger kids at co-op and can converse with them as we’ll as with the parents of these children.

We (ages 10 & 12) participate in – Horseback lessons, Parks and REcreation sports teams, French Tutor, 4H Homeschooling group, Academic Games Homeschooling group, and weekly volunteer making food to feed the homeless in our city.

I just want to add that I struggled with the idea of letting my children socialize with children far different than the way that we are raising ours to be.  However, after much prayerful consideration and also deep consideration of my children’s strengths, weaknesses and also some imput from them on the issue …. we decided that we can not hide and that we are better examples of God’s grace and wisdom and love in the world, than by only being with others who already accept, believe and practice such.  It’s not always easy.  We fail continually at being a perfect image obivously, but we always strive.  There are certainly times to pull back and reevaluate things.  Children are astonishing in their faith and abilities.  I have seen more growth in both my children spiritually in the last year than in all previous, more sheltered years.  They have shown strength and courage.  They have asked for help and not been afraid or timid to discuss difficult things.  Their prayers have shifted from praying only for things and people in their own limited worlds, to seeing the need for prayer for the rest of the world (and our those in our city in particular) as an even greater need.  We have all grown tremendously.  I truly feel God guiding us and I pray daily that He will show me where and how I can help and be of service in this world to those who need. I don’t want myself or my children to think our faith is so precarious that if we aren’t careful we’ll lose it to those who don’t have it.  In fact I know that the opposite is true and that is totally God and totally awesome!!

Just my .02

Dd6 has started 4H this year.  We usually go to storytime at our local library during the school year.  Also we have a homeschool co-op that meets every other Friday for a field trip or playtime.  She has friends in Sunday school, which is during the school year only for our church, though we do VBS for a week in the summer and she also takes one 2 week swimming lesson session during the summer as well.  Wow.  That seems like alot written out. 

I wouldn’t be worried about the friends issue if your children aren’t, and would probably opt for 4H over joining the public school activities.