The rate of participation in extracurricular activities had decreased, but has again increased in the recent picture.
So are you among the teachers/parents, who do support their children to perform extracurricular activities? Or are you someone who is still unaware of the benefits of extracurricular activities?
Apart from studies, how do you think that your kids would learn some real life skills, if not from them?
This article sums up all the areas that get pushed towards better due to the importance of extracurricular activities. Let’s examine one by one.
Table of Contents
- What are Extracurricular Activities?
- 15 Benefits of Extracurricular Activities
- 1. Academic Improvement
- 2. Development of Social Skills
- 3. Building Self-Esteem
- 4. Exploring Passions and Career Interests
- 5. Enhancing College and Scholarship Applications
- 6. Mental and Emotional Well-being
- 7. Instilling Responsibility and Discipline
- 8. Cultural Awareness
- 9. Community Engagement
- 10. Lifelong Friendships and Network
- 11. Encouraging a Balanced Lifestyle
- 12. Improves Creativity and Innovation
- 13. Encourage Goal Setting and Achievements
- 14. Better Time Management Skills
- 15. Boosts Physical Fitness
- Concluding It
What are Extracurricular Activities?
Extracurricular activities, itself denote more than or out of curriculum based tasks, that lets students enjoy and sharpen their skills.
These are only means to actually reap out something better from your learning period when having least responsibilities as a student or child.
Extracurricular activities might look like active participation in dance, music, athletics, art creations, or debate competitions, but what goes deeper is their ability to enhance the 21st century skills for students.
As parents you might be struggling with the decision of letting your child perform in these extracurricular activities. But let it be very clear that these activities are going to be boon when you will be putting your child for a college admission.
The present situation has shifted and because of that, you might encounter colleges preferring commitment to other areas along with academic studies of learners.
Even the head of departments motivate such participants to achieve and learn more, even when their academic performance is a bit average.
Explore how to improve academic performance for your child.
These average kids often do wonders while students holding books get behind in this life’s race.
15 Benefits of Extracurricular Activities
Now after mentioning these points, we will see how extracurricular activities actually benefit the multiple areas of your kid’s life.
The benefits of extracurricular activities are as:
1. Academic Improvement
Whatever qualities that are built around participating in extracurricular activities indirectly enhances the scores on result cards of your child.
You might have noticed that youngsters who are contributing and learning multiple skills from multiple ways often develop problem solving, time management and classroom discipline.
This would further mean improved marks and academic credentials for the students and we need to realise this.
2. Development of Social Skills
Extracurricular activities are central to providing opportunities to interact and learn from social settings, leading to building social skills.
All the functions attended and practice sessions somehow work towards progression of understanding emotional makeup of ownself and others.
Every handshake, chit chat, formal and informal gatherings sums up in fostering team management and leadership.
3. Building Self-Esteem
It is well said that if you fight the fear, the fear vanishes.
In the same context, once your kids repetitively present themselves on stages, can burn the parts of shame.
Learn how to build confidence in children.
Extracurricular activities eventually boosts their self esteem, sprouting from self acceptance and working on strengths and weaknesses.
4. Exploring Passions and Career Interests
Only sticking to books and pages can never do the best for you. Along with providing entertainment when your children are clogged with studies, extracurricular activities embrace their fun side.
Once they get continued exposure to varied fields, other than textbooks, they tend to realise what their true interests are.
Especially during certain ages, when they have no big commitments. Children here can find their real passion and work towards it if they want to pursue that as their future career.
Find if studying game-development is a promising career path.
5. Enhancing College and Scholarship Applications
There is a quiet shift in how colleges and universities approach admissions now. Students are using ChatGPT for scholarships, which is fun to know.
The scholarships applications and profile choosing is also based on students interests in other extracurricular activities, depicting that they can do more and are multi-talented.
Such children are more likely to bring in success and prosperity in their lives, thus proving to be a great alumni figure for university in future.
6. Mental and Emotional Well-being
Being stuck to a boring routine can bring a feeling of dissatisfaction in the life of children, often affecting their emotional and children’s mental health.
When your children perform extracurricular activities, they would feel entertained and actually doing something apart from studies.
In such a way, the student stress levels can go down. You will also notice how children who are engaged in extracurricular activities and are away from the screens mostly, are more emotionally and mentally managed.
7. Instilling Responsibility and Discipline
Performing extracurricular activities brings in a sense of student discipline and responsibility in your ward.
They are subjected to appear in group settings offering seamless opportunities to take accountability for themselves and their team.
However the performance goes, what stays common is regular practices and commitment to stay focused.
8. Cultural Awareness
Events like One-india and others being a part of extracurricular activities welcome cultural differences.
Each student gets the privilege to understand other’s traditions with a closer view.
It can be knowledgeable along with enlightening to dive in and foster cultural awareness. Actually students enjoy and learn about other cultures and develop respectful associations with one another in the real world.
9. Community Engagement
Extracurricular activities can diminish the boundaries of class to build a community as a whole.
Students get pushed intently to do good for their community and culture community engagement.
With active participation in extracurricular activities like social clubs, funding, community services, etc. they get the real view of directly connecting with people and contributing positively on a base level.
10. Lifelong Friendships and Network
You will find how your kids lend on to better places when having the best networks and long term friends.
To make it possible, extracurricular activities jump in for students who believe and participate in them.
Having the right people around your corner, when faced with setbacks can actually help in rebuilding yourself and attaining what we call unmatchable success.
11. Encouraging a Balanced Lifestyle
Juggling between multiple work commitments is the new demand of this super fast and hightechy world.
We might get so occupied in the face of life’s challenges that they can rot our lifestyle.
When your kids will actively put them through these situations (by participating in extracurricular activities) from early childhood, they would have practiced how to navigate bridging between relationships, work and self-management skills.
12. Improves Creativity and Innovation
Every time a new dance act is performed or a new drama scene is created, a lot of creative thinking skills get utilized.
The props, the performance, the practice, and the execution, all need innovative thoughts, suggesting why your children need inclusion of extracurricular activities in their study routine.
These skills further help you in teaching heights and become good in leadership skills rather than just staying mediocre.
13. Encourage Goal Setting and Achievements
Everyone, be it you, me or others, all are somehow striving for their best potential that requires perfect goal setting and achieving them within set time.
Learners who are active in extracurricular activities enjoy the goal setting and achieving as if it’s a game for them.
They don’t stress about them and in fact have a positive outlook towards achieving these goals to boost their self belief and knowledge.
14. Better Time Management Skills
Have you seen some adults who are good at almost everything they do and still get time to chill with their loved ones?
These individuals are mastered in time management skills that come from serving in various activities along with academics.
Today’s students might need these skills the most because they fulfill different interests from different extracurricular activities.
15. Boosts Physical Fitness
Parents want their kids to be physically fit as they navigate their life through other mundane setbacks.
Extracurricular activities mostly involve activities that require movement, be it dancing, acting, sports, or artistic projects.
The physical movements due to these activities also evolve as better mental health of the student supporting overall growth of learners.
Concluding It
You might think extracurricular activities to be generic, but the benefits of extracurricular activities are not.
It would be greatly appreciated if you motivate your kids to focus on participating in these activities as they can positively affect their overall personality development.
Starting from basic life skills to actual growth of your child, everything gets influenced by extracurricular activities.
So, once again remind yourself of these advantages and better start putting your children to polish their passion and interests.
