Your thaughts please!! Has anyone took his DC on holiday before the school break up time ?

[preciousmum]

Hi there.
My son started reception this year.Their last day at school for the summer holiday will be the 20th of July.And i am planing to book the summer holiday round the 14th of july.Has anyone done same thing?Will it be ok with the school?Do i have to let them before ?or wait till then?Please your taughts.THere is huge difference in the flight prices.Many thanks

You need to ask the school for a holiday request form - or their equivalent. That is to ask for approved time off. If they don't give it then you can still take the time, but it will be marked as unapproved.

Personally I don't think the last week of the summer term will be any great loss to a reception child. You will gets lots of people who are happy to take time off during school term, and an equal number who won't. Entirely up to you to make up your own mind on this one.

I would point out that missing a few days of school age five is unlikely to make much difference to his class of degree! On the other hand good family relationships and happy memories of holidays might make a big difference to his future adult relationships .

As he is in reception it should make very little difference to his education but please do not ask for extra work etc from the teacher I personally hate that!

he might miss some fun stuff though in the last week. its when we had sports day a a zoo trip. i'm planning to take mine out this year but in middle of a half term instead.

We took dd out of school for 2 1/2 days before 1/2 term in feb to go to Florida when she was 8. It is too hot to go in the summer and we wanted to go with my parents before they were too infirm to enjoy it. I asked the school for permission and got a very snippy letty back denying permission saying that it would be treated as unauthorised, and how disruptive this was etc etc and it was not school policy to issue work. Basically a standard letter, not one specifically for me. Up until this point she had only ever had 1 day off sick from school since she started. We still went and had a good time and dd learnt about another culture, different money, space - we went to Kennedy Space Centre. Probably more than she would have learned at school.

A neighbour took her kids out of school a week early in the summer to go to Spain and take advantage of cheaper flights. Didn't ask the school but got her sister to phone and pretend to be her and tell the school that all 3 of her kids were sick. They were 5, 8 and 9.

To be honest I don't regret what we did, we had a great time and so did dd.