School Holiday Cover

[Reamhar]

I'm trying to work out how this works for most parents, so please be patient with me if this is a really stupid question.

I'm going back to work in June doing school hours 4 days a week, so I have the school pick ups and drop offs covered by this. DS1 starts in reception in September. DS2 will start nursery in June when my new job starts.

My problem is what to do with DS1 during school holidays. There seem to be an awful lot of days to cover, and the amount of help that DH can offer is going to be limited because he travels a lot for his work.

So I wondered if childminders do such a thing as holiday cover only? Or am I dreaming the such a solution exists?
If I had put DS2 with a childminder, might they have been more ammenable to taking DS1 during the holidays.

I'm worrying about this now, and thinking that my choice to take a lower paid job with good "school friendly hours" was the wrong one. That maybe I should have gone for a part time 9-5 job which may have paid more money, required the assistance of a childminder to collect/drop of DS1 to school, but where the relationship would at least exist to request holiday cover too?

Any suggestions? Just how do people manage to do this?

[ProfessorGrammaticus]

Yes child minders do have holiday places. Or you can use a holiday club. Or rope in family- friends too, on a swap basis.

[FluffyMummy123]

Message withdrawn

[HuwEdwards]

We use a mix of holiday clubs to give the dcs a bit of a change (going to the same holiday club day in and day out) can be dull. Ask around at the school and other parents with olds dcs, they'll be able to tell you what's about in your area.

[PrimulaVeris]

We use a holiday club. But in our (large-ish) town there is only one that fully caters for working hours - most of them are something like 10-3 which are useless for us. Also check what they do - there are a lot of sport-oriented ones which are great if you have sporty dc's but not if you don't (like mine!)

Costs ££££

[ChippyMinton]

Can you negotiate to do fewer but longer days in the holidays so you have less days to cover?

[Clary]

We do a mixture of streeeetching out our hols (ie DH and I are mostly off separate weeks - eg I did one week of Easter hols, he did the other) and then some getting rellies here eg Gran to stay for a day or two - and then a bit of holiday club.

These vary hugely. There is one near us that charges about £20/day depending on the hours you do. But a sports club run by the council including sporty activities plus daily swimming is only about £11. Clearly tho if yr DCs aren?t sporty it?s no good. Plus it only runs for school hours which may not suit (tho if your job already runs round school hours anyway it should be OK).

The other option is to do a childcare swap with other mums - I?ll have yr two this day if you?ll have mine that day. I do that less than some as have 3 DCs and it?s quite hard to find a match/someone who will have them all for a day lolol