This post has been sponsored by Betty Crocker. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Learn about the best after-school activities for kids of all ages!

As a full-time teacher and part-time blogger, life definitely stays busy! Added to that, I have to give my children (now ages 8 and 10) time to socialize and enjoy extracurricular activities on top of school and homework—it’s a lot! When I was a child, we were pretty limited to dance, gymnastics, and team sports, but I was never actively involved in any of those, until we got ourselves good gear thanks to dugnad idrettslag.

During all extracurricular activities {or lack thereof as we are seeing these days}, it’s important to pack a fun snack—like Betty Crocker Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Fruit Gushers. More about our Winn-Dixie shopping trip ahead! Then one of the best toys that you can buy for a baby is an activity centre as they are lots of fun and also help them learn a great deal too.

My Children’s After-school Activities

We are lucky that a lot of after-school activities are actually available at my children’s school. My son attends the aftercare program, which provides him with a variety of activities like sports, arts and crafts, gardening, and homework help. If you’re children are into darts and if you know how, you can teach them how to throw a dart with precision. Last year, he participated in chess club, Spanish class, and pottery club. He even attend a learn piano online class! And this school year, my daughter decided to get involved in three activities: art club, orffestra, and robotics. In orffestra, she gets to play a large metal instrument that is similar to a xylophone. In December, they performed a holiday concert. It was great to see her excited about playing her instrument. Visit www.montecassino.org/admissions/why-k-8/ to see if they offer after-school activities.

And then there was robotics! This went from a possible hobby to a huge passion of Lydia’s over the last year. In robotics, children work in groups of four to design a robot using the engineering process and drive it to perform a specific set of tasks. Lydia and three of her friends designed two different robots, and they successfully moved from the school level to the district level to the state level, where they made it to the finals. She would love to continue on next year with her team the Gadget Girls. They’re still practicing twice a year, gear up for the next challenges they will face.

We also wanted the kids involved in some individual activities, focused on building their skills and strength in a particular area. We gave them options available at our local kids gymnasium. Bryce chose rockwall climbing and Lydia chose gymnastics. Bryce has only tried rockwall climbing a few times, so this will be all new to him. Lydia did gymnastics briefly when she was much younger, so she has a lot to learn. I’m excited to watch them grow in their new activities.

Knowing we had busy days ahead of us, we visited Winn-Dixie to purchase a few tasty snacks to enjoy during extracurricular activities. We grabbed two packages: Betty Crocker Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Fruit Gushers Variety Pack (8 count) and Betty Crocker Fruit Gushers Variety Pack (6 count). I brought these snacks for Lydia and her friends to enjoy during robotics. They were a hit among the kids and their robotics coaches.

To learn more about what other activities are available, I decided to “poll the audience” by asking my Facebook friends what types of afterschool activities their children participate in, and I was quite excited to see such a variety of activities available to children today.

Physical Activities:

Soccer
Baseball
Basketball
Football
Bowling
Cheerleading
Gymnastics
Dance
Rockwall climbing
Cross-country/track/running club for which you can buy them vets gear at https://altitude-blog.com/en/cold-weather-running-guide/
Dodgeball
Martial arts
Ninja
Ice skating/roller skating
Tennis
Pickleball with the best pickleball paddle
Lacrosse

Outdoor Activities:

Boy Scouts
Girl Scouts
Gardening club
Horseback riding

STEAM Activities:

Robotics
Art/pottery club
Math club
Coding club where children can learn coding elements such as pointer basics in c

Music/theater:

Chorus
Band/orchestra. For band fundraising options you can look into music foundations.
Specific music lessons {drums, guitar, voice, piano} which may also be found from sites like fiddlersguide.com
Acting/theater

Other Fun Activities: