Balancing school, family time, and extra curriculars...

[momtokay]

Hi! My oldest will be old enough for kindergarten next year and I'm really having a hard time wrapping my brain around the whole full time school thing. We have lots of part time kindergarten options available but after that it's school every day until 3 or 3:30. She also wants to take gymnastics and I am assuming will have some homework during the week. If she goes to bed around 8pm I just can't see having much time together as a family. How does this work at your house? Do you have time to do fun things together during the week or on school days is it basically come home, do homework, eat dinner, bathe, read a book or two and into bed? And how do you fit things in like dance, karate, baseball, etc.?

TIA for any advice on how your family finds time to be a family.

[Fianna]

I totally understand your concerns. That was a huge issue for me as well as we thought about our older dd starting kindergarten this past year. I dreaded, dreaded, dreaded the whole scheduling nightmare, not to mention the thought of being away from her all day. But, it has worked out pretty well.

Our dds love to swim and my dh still takes them to the Y a couple of times a week. Yes, on those evenings they aren't in bed by 8, but in our kindergarten the kids have nap time for an hour every day, so she gets enough rest. They have a "10 minutes or less" policy for homework for kinders, so that's taken care of right when we come home every day. It's turned into a nice ritual for us. We come home, sit down together while she does her homework, and talk about her day. Then it's playtime for her and her sister, whatever that means for the afternoon. And we also spend a lot of time up at the school, which is great too. We regularly go up to have lunch with her and I volunteer in her classroom as well, so I still feel very involved in her daily life. And on weekends we still manage lots of fun time, weekend trips, family dinners, playdates, etc.

[EFmom]

It is hard. I WOHM in addition, which adds it's own layer of complication. DH is a teacher, and is out of school fairly early. He picks up our younger dd at daycare and the older one at school, where she is in the afterschool program at around 4:15. The funny thing is that DD1 adores the afterschool program and doesn't want to leave. She gets mad at him for showing up so early, when some of her friends get to stay till 5:30.

She has gymnastics one night a week right after dh picks her up, and once a month she has a Y Adventure Guides meeting after dinner. For the most part, we try hard not to have other evening activities, and I am trying not to get involved in too many other things right now. Dh would have her signed up for soccer, swimming, music, etc., because he thinks she'd enjoy it, but I've put my foot down because I think we are pretty tapped out time-wise as it is.

My school district, which is pretty good otherwise, only has half day K, which I hate. They give the kids tons of homework in K to compensate for not having full day--I think she had more than she does now in 2nd grade.

We try to encourage dd to at least start her homework in the afterschool program. We have her work on it as soon as she gets in, while we are getting other stuff done and dinner going. If it waits until after dinner, she is tired and tends to make a bigger production out of it, and it's more of a drag for her. Basically, we try to make dinner the family time--we talk about our day and relax. Right after dinner, we start on baths and one of us will play with one child while the other one baths the other child. Then it's time for stories and bed.

We get up very early, so the kids need early bed times. It doesn't leave a lot of time for just hanging out and doing stuff together, so we look for the family time where we can find it. I find that I need to try to keep organized and on top of things, or everything falls apart.