<p>The son of a relative of mine got into building legos, started a fundraiser and developed an annual legos building contest with the proceeds going to charity. Look into something like that.</p>
<p>Yes, we are in Scouts (with no political issues).</p>
<p>I appreciate the charity idea and have thought about that before. Being a physician by trade, I favor the world of patients so if we could set something like that up, odds are I’d suggest the medical arena to my son to be the recipient. Actually, I’m writing a medical children’s book in the wee hours of the morning (when I’m not doing things like this!) so I’d love to set up a charity if the books ever take off…</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, last year my D2 placed fourth in our state in the National History Bee. So… learning about the Civil War can pay off! 
The National History Bee & Bowl is a fairly new competition at the high school level that has national playoffs. </p>
<p>One thing to consider is whether he has any interests that might lead to those types of competitions in the middle school years. Spelling, geography, and math all have bowls or competitions. Some states have Quiz Bowl for middle school years (although that requires a team). Chess and Scrabble also have some competitions (although the Scrabble ones probably require travel). When he gets to high school there are math and various science olympiads. Although I must say that my D2 decided in ninth grade to self study for one of the science Olympiads, and was heartily sick of that science by the end of her 10th grade year. She was self studying – I think having a group or team to study with would have been better. Robotics is another area where there are teams at the middle school and high school level that your kids might be able to be involved with, depending on where you live.</p>
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<p>YoHoYoHo, you beat me to recommending that Cal Newport book. Read that book before subscribing to this idea that you kids should do the same clubs and activities that kids in schools are doing.</p>
<p>More great ideas, thank you. Now, I really must read this book…</p>
<p>Perhaps “clubs” is the wrong word. I don’t think that 5th grade is too early for interested students to be involved in ECs of some kind. Kids get involved in theater, martial arts, music, chess, some sports and almost anything you can think of at that age. National recognition will ultimately depend on either talent or drive (and perhaps some luck). My son had a classmate who won a National Violin competition when she was in fourth grade (and now attend Yale). He knows another student who won the State Chess Tournament in fifth grade and then took a year off to travel to chess tournaments around the country (he just graduated from Harvard). They did not “burn out”. All I can say is that it is necessary for you to know your child and what interests them. If they burn out or become disinterested, try to find something else.</p>
<p>Most of the things that would pay off in the admissions game that you would be at an advantage to start early with are skill-related. Hence, you don’t need to be in a “club.” An instrument or a sport are good examples of this. But for those, you can never count on your kid having an interest level and talent level to have national recognition. </p>
<p>Getting into debate club early? Eh. Somehow, I don’t think that would help your performance in debate club in high school. And there aren’t debate clubs for 5th graders anyway. In fact, there basically aren’t clubs for elementary school kids beyond maybe orchestra or band. </p>
<p>I don’t know about prep school admission, but I would guess they would mainly care about academics, not fluff extracurriculars by junior high kids.</p>
<p>Thinking cynically, there probably are a couple of clubs/activities that don’t take any talent but for which you could parlay early involvement into college admissions, but I hesitate to brainstorm in this area.</p>
<p>Just to set the record straight, prep schools care VERY much about extracurriculars. Bright kids with good grades are a dime a dozen (in the pool of prep school applicants anyway) and schools are looking for standouts and for people who show community involvement. My children were applying when they were 7th, 8th, and 9th graders and weren’t joiners or organizers by nature, thus without my guidance their “resumes” would have had a lot of empty spaces.</p>
<p>In purely practical terms, without making any judgements, here are a few extracurriculars that can help in college admissions. (None of my three played these instruments or participated in these activities/sports, but I know kids for whom it made a huge difference.)</p>
<p>Low brass instruments (tuba, euphonium, trombone)
Low reed instruments (base (or is it bass?) clarinet, baritone sax)
Bassoon
Bag pipes
French horn
Other unusual instruments
Crew
Fencing
Other unusual, generally non-team, sports</p>
<p>The musical instruments I listed are among those that most kids are not attracted to. They are difficult to master (bassoon) or large, or not well known among kids. It is easier to gain statewide recognition with these instruments, because there are fewer kids playing them. They are expensive to buy and to maintain. Most kids who play these do not own them, but use school issued models. It can be difficult to find private instructors for some of these instruments. However, there are fewer people competing for low brass scholarships than for violin scholarships.</p>
<p>Mentally making note never to attend a state bagpipes competition … (covering ears)</p>
<p>OP - just keep in mind that interests change. I would have sworn up and down that my S was going to be a creative writer -he had aptitude, won little contests at that age, etc. he discovered an interest in 11th grade that took him in an entirely different direction.</p>
<p>^^ Ha! Wouldn’t that be awful? There’s a high school that does field a marching band with bagpipes, though.</p>
<p>I love bagpipes. They bring a tear to my eye, no matter what. It’s the Celt in me. :)</p>
<p>OP, check out Destination Imagination. The activities are worthwhile in and of themselves, it involves other kids, it is not school-based, it is widely known, and it has region/national competitions.</p>
<p>I think that a lot of kids benefit from a judicious parental push here and there. I literally forced my S to try the track team in Jr high.When I say forced, I mean that I required him to sign up, found out that he did not go to the signup, called the very vice teacher/coach to see if it was too late, told him that S would be at practice the next day, and made certain that this time he went. Turned out that he loved it, he was good at it (as I had suspected he would be), and he ran indoor and outdoor track throughout HS, and the team was important to him on many levels.</p>
<p>I think it is a great idea to be on the lookout for things for your S to try. Of course, he doesn’t have to limit himself to standard activities and groups, but you know that without me telling you! :)</p>
<p>At the 5th grade level, one daughter was involved in Girl Scouts and rec league basketball, and one daughter was involved in a local choir program.
They each were accepted to all the colleges to which they applied.</p>
<p>A few comments-</p>
<p>I looked up the Cal Newport book mentioned in an earlier post. Here’s a quick excerpt.</p>
<p>“Genuinely interesting accomplishments are generated only by living a genuinely interesting life-not by special ability or careful planning.” So, so true.</p>
<p>Sports like crew, fencing and squash are helpful in college admissions IF you’re good at them. However, there are very few schools that offer these sports and no one recruits 5’10’’ 180 pound male rowers or kids ranked 40 in the state for fencing. Unless you’re applying to Ivies, NESCAC schools or other schools that offer these as varsity sports they’ll be no more helpful than any other EC. For instance, the U of Michigan offers rowing as an intercollegiate sport but has only clubs for fencing and squash. There would be no high powered fencing coach at U of M to flag your child’s admissions file.</p>
<p>This is not to say that your child should not be encouraged to take up these sports or the analogous musical instruments, just that you need to follow his passion if and when he displays it. Eight years is a long time to maintain an interest and it won’t happen unless your child loves what he’s doing. My DS is involved in an unusual sport with which he’s been obsessed since he was little. It’s non-competitive and not offered as a collegiate sport. There are no college scholarships offered based on it and we never kidded ourselves that it would get him into college. And yet…all these years later he still loves it and he has received national recognition for it. It’s turned into the kind of activity college admissions counselors love to brag about on opening day. “We have a published poet, a race car driver and a kid who has climbed Denali!”</p>
<p>We’re convinced it’s what got him, as a student with mediocre grades and stats, into all of the prep schools to which he applied.</p>
<p>So my general advice is to expose your child to many different activities and see what sticks. Ask him what he’d spend his time doing if he could do anything in the world and then find a way to pursue it even if it’s through a back door. Loves sports but doesn’t have an athletic bone in his body? How about training as a ref., a trainer or a statistician? Loves poking in the mud and climbing trees? Take him hiking or teach him how to construct a tree house. Loves animals? 4H, training a guide dog or competition in dog shows. You get the idea. That kid whose wobbly treehouse wasn’t safe for habitation might turn into a master craftsman or an award winning architect.</p>
<p>My last piece of advice is to ask this on one of the many homeschooler forums. Past and present homeschoolers are the best source for clubs and activities that can be done outside a formal school setting.</p>
<p>At that age, my kids were checking out all sorts of local programs - scouts, swimming and other sports, pottery classes, music, theater, gymnastics, religious youth groups, construction (there’s a local museum which runs workshops like “build your own marble run game”), photography, canoeing, geology, knitting, sewing, babysitting training etc. We permitted two activities at a time, preferably one for the mind and one for the body, although we did sometimes allow something like scouts or the religous group to be a third activity. After a year or two of random exploration, they tended to find their interest and settle into a field.</p>
<p>As a homeschooler, the OP may have some flexibility to use some of these as unit studies in the curriculum. Or possibly a local homeschool group might be able to get together a class with a local [fill in the blank] during school hours when they might be able to provide a discounted rate (e.g. a pottery class for homeschoolers during school hours instead of joining the regular afterschool class). The child could even journal about his reflections, which could double count for school and help him settle on a path.</p>
<p>Most of the “clubs” at that age that go on to the national level are team activities like Science Olympiad, etc. Unless you are part of a homeschooling group that has other kids that can put together a team, get it registered at a national level, you can’t participate in those programs.</p>
<p>I agree with others, Boy Scouts (working toward Eagle Scout) is a good option. Colleges love Eagle Scouts.</p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>I’m also a homeschooler. I understand your concerns but I bet if you and your 5th grader sat down and had a good talk about what he/she likes and what he/she is good at, you’ll have a little more direction. It also helps to have access to activities. I missed it if you’re in a large city, small city, or ???</p>
<p>Thinking back to that age brought back a really interesting memory. My son is a violinist (a musician in general but has been playing violin since 6 1/2 and he’s now 18), and I remember someone pressuring me to just have him focus on violin because they felt that was the age you “had” to do it if they were going to excel.</p>
<p>Thing is, my son was interested in so many things. He was a chess player (began competitions near age 11 and has been nationally ranked for his age since probably 13 or 14), he was a baseball player (did lots of local stuff with baseball through high school, but isn’t playing in college), he loved math (he did MathCounts in 7th grade and then did AMC 10/12, ARML, AIME, and a few other competitions in 10th - 12th grade), he loved physics (did Physics Olympiad and Physics Bowl in 10th-12th), and loved to play and learn in general.</p>
<p>I knew it wasn’t the time for him to specialize and in fact, he never did specialize. He continued to do what he loved (chess, baseball, math, physics, church worship, teach/tutor violin and math, socialize, etc) throughout high school.</p>
<p>Yes, he did reach national level in several areas (chess, physics olympiad, AIME/Physics Bowl/ARML-if you can really count those) but it was because he enjoyed it. The highlight for him every year was the bus ride to the ARML competition because he was hanging out with friends playing Mafia. :-)</p>
<p>There was a point in 10th grade where I highly encouraged, maybe even forced him to try the local math circle again after feeling isolated at state MathCounts in 7th grade. He hadn’t wanted to go back but I couldn’t challenge him at home or in his community college classes. It was one of the best things I did. Not because of the national level recognition but because he loved the kids and he enjoyed being challenged in the competitions. </p>
<p>In fact, it so shaped him that he ended up choosing MIT and has about 7 other friends from his math circle joining him at MIT.</p>
<p>So, might I encourage you to explore options in areas where you see your child’s strengths and interests. </p>
<p>My middle son is totally opposite of my oldest and will have no nationally recognized accomplishments (or at least I don’t think so), but he has his own interests. He’s been a cellist for almost 10 years. This year, he’s joining the local speech and debate club as he seems to have a natural affinity for off the cuff humor and he’s desiring to debate. (But truly, he joined mostly to meet other kids as he’s pretty introverted and it’s hard for him to reach out) He’s also interested in game design but I haven’t really moved on that one.</p>
<p>I think if you can go at it from the angle of following your child’s interests (which it sounds like you do) and then exploring new things together, I am sure you will find things that your child will excel in. And, you won’t need to think about the national notoriety because it may evolve naturally.</p>
<p>Feel free to PM me anytime. :-)</p>
<p>With two older kids that I partially homeschooled and one 8th grader, I’ve found that at 5th grade, most kids have something that interests them, even if they are not an obvious path to national recognition. </p>
<p>My S was a Lego fiend and would spend hours making villages and days setting them up, only to tear them down and make something new. For fun he had me buy old VCR, clocks, etc. at Goodwill so he could take them apart and reassemble them. No clubs-but he took classes at “Kid’s Kollege” on science, and attended a 4H camp on plants, which he enjoyed growing. All of this helped him to realize that he loved working with his hands, fixing stuff and wanted to be in a hand-on profession. He does a sort of Mythbusters job now. He went to CC, not a 4-year college, which probably doesn’t meet your needs, but he’s very happy, loves his job, and makes good money. AND, because he’s so adept at fixing things, he’s never bought a new car-always some old thing he customizes himself.</p>
<p>My older D has always loved challenging sports like rock-climbing, white-water rafting, etc. Since most high schools don’t offer these, she joined a couple of local teen groups that went on trips around WA that involved such “death sports” as my H calls them. Of course this helped her get into college, even though she wasn’t nationally recognized.</p>
<p>I know some parents of homeschoolers who were very involved in their churches and local activities, nothing nationally ranked, but they were excellent students, held down jobs which they performed well and got promoted in, and were accepted at selective colleges. One will be starting grad school at 20, after getting her degree while working FT and remaining highly involved in her church. </p>
<p>What schools look for is interest and drive, not just whether your kid’s name is on a national list somewhere.</p>
<p>I don’t want to offend anyone here, but I would not advise any fifth grader to join the boy scouts today. Not all fifth graders know their own sexual orientation. What if he realizes in tenth grade that he is gay- and wants to come out?</p>
<p>vicariousparent–then he drops out of Boy Scouts–:rolleyes:</p>