It's so nice to read all of the positive comments about home schooling .

I don't know anything about this topic so I wondered about sports, music, art etc???
How does that work in?

Well, for sports we have a local league of baseball and soccer teams. The baseball leagues are run through all the local churches and each church has a team. The soccer teams are through the three area schools. My oldest is thinking of joining the soccer team next year and I'm stocking up on Neosporin. My girls are taking piano, guitar and lap harp lessons and they have music workbooks. We do buy all the supplies to teach various arts, using various art mediums at home but there's also a local art society that gives art lessons to children and we attend that. The outside programs do help with the "socialization" but I also agree that children need to be able to relate to adults as well. I love to watch my girls easily converse with an elderly friend at church and then turn to a younger child and meet them on their level as well.

OOPS

You just reminded me of something. I went to Catholic schools growing up (Utica NY) and I took a lot of lessons outside the school, for example the art museum etc I was in Girl Scouts and took swimming lessons somewhere else Our school didn't have many extra-curriculars. My brother played baseball through the city as well. Seems we spent way too much time in church when we should have been in school!!!

That is exactly what we did. We were members of a homeschooling group and did field trips about once a month. They now have baseball, basketball, and football leagues for the homeschoolers. The ones around here generally have to have several towns together to have enough people, but they get together once a week. My son took piano lessons and worked part-time. He got together with friends to hunt, target practice, swim, etc. He always stayed busy! When he got to college, he immediately got involved with the Student Government Association and served as V Pres., then President.

I give all of you homeschoolers a lot of credit. When mine were little homeschooling was in its infancy. If I had kids today, I would definitely home school. I would love to see my dgs's home schooled. Maybe if more were, the schools would change for the better.

In the past mine have had piano lessons, they played soccer at out local YMCA, baseball at our YAA, my daughter has been on the swim team at the YMCA, and we also still attend a homeschool co-op where we meet once a week for classes with other homeschoolers. There we have had chemistry, biology (complete with dissections), art, art history we take field trips etc. Its been a very rewarding expericence to be involved with our homeschool co-op.

We had a local co-op but the founders disbanded it when their own gradutated. :-( But, our neighbors have and still are homeschooling 10 of their 11 kids! They've been an inspiration and a shoulder to cry on many times. Some of their kids are cyber schooled, some not. And their youngest has Downs Syndrome so she goes to a program at the public school that helps her with her speech. All three schooling mediums work for them and it's great. We still do the field trips and have lots of fun.

The only "church" based extra curricular activity we have is the baseball league. With the other activities, our girls interract with kids from all walks of life, this side of the tracks and the other. It's heartbreaking sometimes, to see the abused or neglected come in, but I don't want my kids to be blind to what really goes on in this world. Seeing these scenes, they really step up to the plate and learn to reach out to these kids while still treating them like they would anyone else. My heart bursts with pride everytime my daughter's share their snack with a little boy who's parents never make one for him or even come to the classes.

For sports my kids swim at the YMCA, one does dance, and one does Karate (haven't found a 2nd activity for the oldest yet-none she wants to try, anyway). The curriculum we use has electives in Art but we haven't used them. My kids are all very artsy craftsy though, so they do plenty of art on their own. No music though-I never had music in school. If they want to try something I will find an instructor for them.