My 4yo is only in morning pre-K so done with school by 11AM. She does ballet, gymnastics, swim, and soccer in the afternoons. She wants to do basketball again winter when soccer is done. I bet basketball or Tball might interest your son, plus swim. I know a lot of boys are into karate at this age too!

Anonymous wrote:For all kids, it is so much better for their mental health to have free time, and it’s better for them in so many other ways, too. Let’s let kids be kids. Just because these activities are available, it doesn’t mean you have to choose them. Like going to a buffet and trying to eat it all.

he gets out of school at 230. That’s probably 5 hours s day or so of free time. Doing a couple of 30-45 min classes a week will
Still allow plenty of free time.

I think an indoor play place membership is useful for weekends especially for bad weather. I prefer the ones with open play time though vs classes for that age. Other than that a good park with farm animals like kinder farm or frying pan farm are great for decent weather weekends. We usually get a membership there as well.

OP, the answer is TKD, gymnastics (my boys liked a more parkour style ninja gymnastics), library programming (covid killed this but I hope it is coming back by now), forest class. Some kids need something more structured to break up the afternoon. I get that some kids need unstructured free time, but all kids are different. Don’t waste time and money if your child is fine at home/playing outside. But if your child is climbing the walls by 4pm, it’s nice to have an activity at a place where that energy can be directed.