You know, I never would have thought of sports tournaments as a valuable resource in our homeschool before we started doing it. Some of the benefits I’ve noticed are:
- It is a social outlet for Care Bear. When we go on a tournament trip, it’s like a big sleep over for the whole weekend. Yes, one of her family members have always been with her, but she gets to hang out with her fencing friends outside of her fencing practice and she has a lot of fun.
- She learns the etiquette and safety of traveling.
- We are able to see different areas of the country we may not get to see otherwise. This last weekend we went to Washington, D.C. and a few months ago we took a road trip to Texas for a tournament and to visit family at the same time.
- Excuse to visit family! It’s too easy to say we don’t have the money to travel far to visit family, but when you can visit family and go to a traveling tournament, it feels like those traveling dollars are better spent.
- Care Bear learns a healthy amount of competition. We witness many unhealthy reactions to losing in these competitions, and she can both learn to be a humble winner and a gracious loser.
- Since fencing isn’t a team sport, the team mentality isn’t set in just with playing games like it would be in soccer or basketball, for instance. When we go in the trips, Care Bear tends to stick around in the tournament area after she’s done so she can see how her teammates are doing and cheer them on.
On to show and tell, hehe! Here are some pictures from our most recent trip, alhamdulilah.
- Playing pool again with more friends.
[…] your vacation from Sunday to Thursday when hotel rates are cheaper! We love that we can go to any fencing tournament our finances will allow, without having to worry about truancy laws, or piling up the work while […]