<p>On another note- I finished skimming the cal Newport book. </p>
<p>The next part of the book talks about the advantages of focus, so it seems that there may be some rationale to ask DS to really consider whether or not he wants to add another activity. At the minimum, I think I will ask him how he is advancing his deepest interest and whether he thinks adding something new will detract from this.</p>
<p>Curious - Spyboy has two main 4-H projects: horticulture & poultry. Normally he would compete at county fair in showmanship – which is all about what the kid has learned about their animal-- & breeds – which is how closely does your animal resemble the perfect version of that breed. (Think Westminster Dog show)</p>
<p>This is a week long activity which involves setting up barns, prepping your animal, watering & feeding your animal, herdsmanship duties in the barn on 2 hour rotating schedules/assisting during other shows & helping other members with their animals, plus showing. Last year he qualified for state fair and competed there, which for poultry is a one day only event. He won’t be eligible this year because he’ll miss county. </p>
<p>4-H is year round with meetings, other competitions and ton of volunteer opportunities.</p>
<p>Agent,</p>
<p>I think that sounds like a great activity, and one that would make him stand out here. </p>
<p>Novi,</p>
<p>I think he’ll need to keep track another way anyway, because all the school does is monitor the total number, and write it on the report card. I assume for the Common App he’ll need to say that he spent 200 hours on the tech crew at Such and Such theatre, and 20 hours at the Smithsonian, and 5 hours talking to Grandma. Although I doubt Grandma will make the top 10 list.</p>
<p>I guess I’d just have him track the hours at home for future reference-he’s bound to double or even triple what he needs to graduate and may prefer adding hours from things he’ll be doing closer to his last couple of years for that. My D will likely have all of hers soon too since she puts in so many hours at the after school and summer camp. She hasn’t turned anything into the school for credit yet, but she did get an award for it from the Lion’s Club through the school. </p>
<p>I made her choose her summer classes last night since 3 of the dance ones she had in mind began on the same day. She added ANOTHER one-African Dance, but it doesn’t conflict with anything (yet), plus tap-another new one, and Zumba. We’re leaving salsa out for now. She skipped out of the room, saying, “I love dance! You are the BEST mom ever!” I’ll venture to say dance is her EC passion, lol.</p>
<p>Then I guess I agree with your son! </p>
<p>Have him track the hours himself. :)</p>
<p>It has been interesting to read about the way each of your children handles their interests. For the past few years swimgirl has been gradually narrowing the activities she participates in and now her main focus is swimming. We have tried to keep her in other activities such as art and ballet how ever she has always chosen swimming.</p>
<p>In order to try to prevent burnout during the school year we have her participate in other ECs however this summer we will indulge her passion. She will be leaving soon to go on a travel training trip. She will have a long weekend at the beach with 2-4 hours of good training in a nearby pool each day with about 4 other teams. After that she will have a team travel meet in another state. During the summer she will train about 2-5 hours a day mostly in the pool and she will also do some weight training, running and crossfit. At the end of the summer we will travel to our regional championship meet followed by another meet in California. She will then have about 2 weeks out of the pool before school starts.</p>
<p>I notice that a lot of your kids are already busy with community orgs and volunteer work. Are you keeping track of the time they spend? Would you start keeping track after HS has officially started? I’m really interested in 4-H because some kids start acquiring volunteer hours when they are 8 years old.</p>
<p>At this point we know it’s X hours of volunteering a week, and it’s always the same, plus X hours of dance, also the same. There’s X hours of choir, etc. She had to keep track of anything athletic because her school has no PE so they need to fulfill that outside of school. It can be anything from walking the neighborhood to formal sports classes but for ehr it was easy as we had the dance hours.</p>
<p>Spyboy graduated from 8th grade yesterday with many awards and a smile on his face. Now onward to summer and then freshman year.</p>
<p>Omedog: At the kids’ school, they must have a minimum of 20 hours of service per year. 120 if they want to earn a service cord for graduation. Much of the service is working with the homeless, food banks, and underserved populations. But they do allow 4-H hours because it covers most of those populations and the kids teach on top of it.</p>
<p>Middle school graduation is tomorrow, and I’m just relieved that we made it to the end. CuriousKid missed about 7 straight weeks of school this quarter, due to out of control allergies, and not surprisingly his grades have been erratic. But he survived, and appears to have passed everything, although he’ll retake the second semester of Algebra in summer school to fix his low final grade.</p>
<p>As far as keeping track of hours and activities. I was thinking that I’d put together a google form to dump it into a spreadsheet from which we can calculate hours. Is that too helicopterish? He’s got lots of small activities, with hours that vary week to week, so if we don’t write it down I don’t know how we’d guess. Our school does keep track of community service hours if you remember to turn the forms in (not CuriousKid’s strength), but they don’t tell what they were for, so one activity blends into the next. The school requires 75 hours between 6th and 12th, and if CK is right and his drama teacher gave him 50 hours for stage crew he’ll finish the year with about 120, largely because they are very lax about what counts.</p>
<p>D graduated middle school tonight and was beaming in her Audry Hepburn look. She practically glowed. She kept shaking her head and saying “I can’t believe I’m going to high school.” Her sister got called into work at the last minute and her beloved adopted Nana was too ill to make it, so it wasn’t perfect, but all in all a great night. She has a final day field trip to the water park tomorrow, then three days off before she starts on dance and other classes and her camp volunteering. Three days of inactivity is about the limit for a kid who talks in exclamation points.</p>
<p>Ssea, that sounds lovely! I love the “Audrey Hepburn look” description.</p>
<p>Curiouskid’s graduation was cancelled due to tornado warnings, so we went out for Japanese food instead. He is so glad to be done. He’s mostly home this week and starts working on the stage crew for his new show next week.</p>
<p>Is anyone worried that their kid is “biting off more than they can chew” for next year?</p>
<p>Except for this spring, when he had such crazy allergy issues, CuriousKid did well in 8th grade. He got mostly B’s some A’s in mostly honors classes, while playing football in the fall, snowboarding a ton in the winter, refereeing youth soccer in the spring, being very involved in the technical and production side of theater, and picking up some volunteer hours with a few different organizations. He was busy, but not overwhelmingly so and seemed to have enough time to play video games and hang out with friends. </p>
<p>For next year, though, he’s signed up for a more academic load, adding a foreign language, and substituting an honors level engineering course for PE in his schedule. He also wants to continue with his EC’s from this year, but football, snowboarding, and theater all ramp up in intensity at the high school level, and he wants to add a dance class and maybe join a club or two at the high school. </p>
<p>He’s thinking of submitting an application this week for a winter/spring theater program that’s outside of school. Next week is also the last week for him to submit a request for class changes for next year. I’m pleased that he’s got so many interests, but worried that he’ll be overwhelmed, and wondering if I should encourage him to either make an academic change, or say no to the theater program. What guidance are other people giving their kids?</p>
<p>That seems like a lot to me, CuriousJane, but I think it also depends on each kid and how they function under stress and deadlines. Some kids thrive on it, other kids end up spinning their wheels. </p>
<p>My oldest was always happiest when she had several things going at once and she could manage it well. I’m not sure yet how this kid will do. He’s an actor and will be in 2-3 musical theater productions this year. He will be training in the Fall with the baseball team but will probably have to choose between baseball and one of his shows in the Spring. I can’t imagine him doing both. He might possibly be working August-October a few days a week but that’s not set in stone yet. And I told him any grade below a B and the job goes.</p>
<p>Guess we’ll just play it by ear and see how he fares and make adjustments as necessary.</p>
<p>Same here. My other kids were nowhere near as driven to be so involved in things as my 2017 kid. She does know when to step back-yesterday she was just too tired to go to her drop-in dance class, so I’m thinking that once school starts she’ll know when something has to go. But we’ve always held the position that school comes first, and if anything suffers academically, some EC is on the chopping block.</p>
<p>She goes to a school where most work is done AT the school, not so much homework and NO busywork. That helps. It looks like in the fall she wants to ad ASB and dance team there, plus her volunteer work a couple of days after school, then dance classes, and all her church work (dance, two choirs, ushering and possibly assistant Sunday School teacher). I can barely keep track. So far she’s kept excellent grades while staying this active. High school is another animal, so we’ll see when we get there.</p>
<p>Looks like a lot of our kids like to be busy! </p>
<p>Novikid likes to be busy as well but I think I have no choice but to trust his ability to manage his schedule. So far he has done just fine despite a very demanding spring schedule. </p>
<p>I think he’s planning to be cautious in the fall. </p>
<p>By the way, congrats to all the middle school grads!</p>
<p>Novikid17 is away at camp so his little brother is lonely. At least no fighting in the house.</p>
<p>So we’ve already had to do some rescheduling. African dance was cancelled and Zumba got moved, so our Saturdays are now free, but not Wednesday nights. We’re doing a different Latin dance and skipping tap, and putting photography on hold. The summer camp Sseakid volunteers at started Monday and she’s already been moved from “helper” in the big kid’s room to FT assistant in the K room. She came home yesterday full of stories about “her” kids. </p>
<p>She’s admitted that she’s a little unnerved at sharing some classes and projects (it’s a project-based learning school) with kids up to three grades ahead next year, but she’ll be ok. She’s already working side-by-side with adults.</p>
<p>Happy 4th everyone!</p>
<p>Hi everyone - thanks to Jane for OP and the rest of you for keeping it going! I just read through most of the posts so hopefully I’m caught up…</p>
<p>I’ve got a S17, and also D14, so I recognize many of you all from the 2014 forum…welcome to all! My D was sick for most of spring/early summer, so I didn’t get on CC as much as I’d have liked. </p>
<p>Here’s my S in a nutshell:</p>
<p>-Very sports-oriented. A solid player that coaches seem to like–he’s all about helping the team out. He plays lacrosse, and has just started summer training for XC this fall. Practice starts next week. Lacrosse conditioning going on too, so not sure how running for 45 minutes and strength conditioning are going to mesh?? Sounds like opposing goals to me!</p>
<p>-Likes being in choir-new for him. Is in elective early-bird HS choir that will likely take a lot of time & travel, but he really wanted to do it, so…</p>
<p>-Academically, he’s just like what a couple of you describe - solid student, B’s and A’s in the classes he likes. He did manage to tank his Alg. 1 H grade last year, which will be on his HS transcript. It’s mostly due to him not handing stuff in on time, and a few bad grades on some concepts. We were going to make him re-take this summer, but no enough time. He’ll have to do it next summer. Any ideas on how to make that happen over summer break? </p>
<p>-Courses signed up for:
–Choir (early-bird)
–Geometry (not H for the first time ever, but given the Alg grade…maybe a good thing)
–AP Human Geo (billed as an easy way to get feet wet in AP world with low risk)
–Bio H
–Eng 9 H
–Spanish I (no H option in 9th)
–Concert Choir (required for the early-bird choir)</p>
<p>One thing I had S do that I wish I’d figured out for D was to start taking the PSAT in 7th grade. He goes to the HS, sits in the test room with older kids, and then I pick him up at lunch. He’s done it 2 years now (7th and 8th), and tells us that he thinks the test is fine and he’s not nervous at all. We havea huge public school where only the very top and bottom students get the attention, and he’s neither. Not knowing all the concepts is fine–it’s all about just taking the test over again so he’s familiar. I think his last score was 139, but that’s immaterial to the process. Talking the HS GC into it the first year was tough. Once I got her on board, she just called the school banker and all was well. It’s $12 or $15 for the test. Don’t try your MS GC - just go straight to HS. I highly recommend doing this if you can.</p>
<p>My D is a totally different animal. Much higher stats, but that’s due to her really stressing over everything and just being a stronger student overall. She loves taking SAT’s, didn’t like ACT format at all. Missed NMS Commended by 1 point, but picked herself up and is moving on.</p>
<p>Will let you all know how my D’s college apps are going. Right now it’s Wellesley (ED), top pick (and yes, it’s 100% needs met). Alabama is strong 2nd-she likes the campus community and honors program. Due to those football-obsessed alumni (ROLL TIDE), they have tons of merit aid starting for just a 3.5 GPA and 1320 SAT (CR+M). Not sure where else she will end up applying.</p>
<p>Thanks again for posting this thread–looking forward to this great community! This is a nice place to come when life starts getting stressful. Like-minded parents are so relaxing…</p>
<p>Hi Vegasmom!</p>
<p>Your S and mine sound like they’d have a lot in common, good but not great students who love both sports and the arts. Mine chose football and theater instead of lacrosse and choir, but would probably enjoy those equally well.</p>
<p>Mine is retaking algebra in summer school. He had B’s until 4th quarter when he missed 30+ classes due to allergies that got totally out of control. He’ll start Wednesday.</p>