Work full time - DC in summer hols??

[user1484167681]

If you work full time, what do you do with your children in the summer holidays? We have 8.5 weeks to fill this year (DC1 started reception in Sept 22) and I’m slightly aghast tbh…

Mine went to summer camp. She would’ve bored at home all day.

Summer holidays are a nightmare. I’d cry if ours were 8 weeks. But be grateful your child can go to a mainstream club. We’re also in NW London and clubs for SEND kids can be up to £150 a (short) day.

If you’re in NW London you’re near me. Camp Beaumont, Barracudas and Club Excel are the big names and green are based in private schools so can cater for those holidays. If you Google there’s sometimes a discount code.

DC in a private school so we get 8 weeks off too.

week 1: sports camp at school
week 2: sports camp at school
This is 9.30-3 so I do my 21hrs over the five days
weeks 3-6: one of the clubs above, does 8.30-5.30.
week 7: hopefully the sports club on at school
week 8: annual leave

DH not allowed annual leave in the summer. I work three days a week so we do other things on my days off.

I create a spreadsheet and scour local parenting groups on Facebook for any ad hoc clubs. Luckily all my school mum friends are in the same position so we send our kids to the same place so there’s some familiarity.

I find Christmas the worst as there’s no clubs but understandably everyone at work wants to be off then too.

I am just in the process of trying to change my hours so that I can do different arrangements in term time and school holidays. I will work 0.7 FTE which basically equates to school hours during term time and then during the holidays I will do my hours compressed into three days. So I will have 2 days a week off as standard. Then each week I will use 1 or sometimes 2 days of annual leave and DH will use 2 or sometimes 1 day. So between us we have the whole holidays covered but only use about 1/5 of our leave allowance each. We will also have a week off altogether for a holiday.

Yeah, my child went to Camp Beaumont twice this year but is fed up with it… hence not wanting to sign him up for eg the full six weeks we need covered.

How come you need the whole six weeks covered? Do you/partner not have any annual leave you can take?

@user1484167681

I think if they are at school all year then it would be exhausting going to activities all week for most of summer.

Can't either of you reduce working hours for the next few years?

In early years of primary it was spliting all our annual leave (2 weeks each covered 4 weeks of school holidays) and school summer club. Some flexible working (dh would work weekends and have a day or two off during week).

Later, again split annual leave, leisure centre club, reciprocal childcare arrangements with other parents, dh working weekends.

Two weeks holiday in summer together, when that annual leave split could cover 4 weeks, is a luxury many parents with school age kids cant afford to do.

dc are teens now and sort of sort themselves out in their holidays...

when in primary school we did a mix of holiday camps, holiday clubs, stay with grandparents and staggering holidays. sometimes day swaps with other parents.

some leisure centres offer awsome clubs, same for other sports clubs.
pgl does camps. probably other providers as well.

probably a bit late for sommer sign up though.

Good to know we maybe need to think about this more in advance in future! We’ve only just booked Easter camp through school, so didn’t realise people plan 6+ months ahead!

We don’t want to reduce our hours. Annual leave will be necessary, for sure. This is all very helpful, thank you! Will be making that spreadsheet and thinking it all through in the week ahead…