Short term place then nursery in September - bad idea?

[Creatureofthenight]

My LO has a place at a nursery in September. I work in a school so am off over the summer holidays. We need a few weeks childcare before the summer but if we start her at nursery early we’ll have to pay over the hols for time we don’t need. Can I find her a short term placement? Maybe with a childminder? Is this a stupid idea and should we just suck it up and start her at nursery early and pay the holiday fees?

It's not stupid I've done it many times (as a childminder). especially because teacher wants holiday pay which is considerably more than maternity pay. Happens all the time.

But why not consider a childminder who only works term time? You would save an absolute fortune.

DH is keen on nursery esp as LO will be an only child. But must admit am reconsidering. I’m really confused by the huge number of registered childminders in my area, don’t know how to find the right one!

Childminders look after other children too and it actually replicates the home/ sibling relationship much better than nurseries. We look after a range of aged children so they get to play and relate to older and younger children too instead of the narrow spectrum of children their own age which they will have for the rest of their school lives.

That’s a good point Georgie I hadn’t thought about that. Can either of you point me towards the best place (website or other) to find a childminder? No one I know in my area uses one.

You could contact your Local Authority Early years dept for a list of the registered providers in your borough. This will be long and exhaustive but maybe time consuming to narrow down. You can also use a website called childcare.co.uk but this has a pricy membership to message people, it is free to advertise and read though. If you have the tine you can cross reference the two lists for best results.

The only other thing I’d say is please be upfront with any setting if you only plan to use them short term. It is incredibly sad to bond with a child, invest money on new equipment that wouldn’t get a lot of use or turn away future enquiries only to find out you were a stop gap for a place elsewhere. I’d much rather be told you only need a few weeks care and line up another child for September if needed.

Some nurseries offer term time only contracts too - ours does as it is attached to a school. It might be worth checking with your nursery.

Maybe you DH doesn't really understand what a child-minder does and visiting a few will help him see its not the same as a child being at home or with a friend but a very good alternative to nursery unfortunately the only time we see cm's in the media is on bad tv shows that don't actually show childminding but illegal unregistered care.