childcare during school holidays

[ElleOhElle]

I don't really know why I'm thinking about this now as DD isn't even 3 yet but just forward thinking. If you and your partner work - who has your children during school holidays?

Holiday Club

1. Our holiday, 2. holiday club at local leisure centre, 3. old childminder or 4. friends (if pushed).

Normally 1 or 2 now school aged. Was 1 or 3 before they were school age (by which point they could go to the leisure centre. Only about 10 days a year max we need this though as we overlap hols and I don't work FT

We cover it with a mixture of holiday club, childminder, grandparents and using our own annual leave.

My son will start school next august and for the holidays our childminder will take him (she'll have him for an hour before school each day anyway) apart from the time that we'll all be on holiday together (maybe 2 weeks).

Annual leave, holiday clubs and grandparents. I live in a smallish market town and there are about half a dozen holiday clubs to choose from.

Holiday club,do book well in advance.i book feb for the summer holidays

Mixture of holidays (me and dh only take 1 week off together), friends (take friends dc for a week and they take mine for another week), football club for a week, holiday club, grandparents.

Many holiday clubs won't take children until they are 5 or 6.

Thankfully dh has a term time only job, but dd does go to a CM term time - we would just send her there holidays too.

We rarely take holiday together (1 or 2 weeks per year). I think they need down time too - lazy mornings occasionally, a tv morning. The winter term is usually the longest term (by quite a few weeks) and my children for sure needed the rest at October half term. If you have more than 1 child, holiday clubs can be expensive. Its about £42 a child here, plus extra if there is a trip, so with 3 children, thats at least £126 a day!

Thankfully, they have 2 weeks in the summer holidays with their grandparents, we swap days with friends occasionally. We can just about manage without using holiday clubs too much but its a bloody nightmare to be honest!

Thanks, it sounds like holiday clubs are going to be useful and hopefully some grandparents will be retired by the time I need them!!

We've got a good holiday club that you can book as late as the week before, also most of them take childcare vouchers so you can save quite a bit if you get those.

I was lying awake in bed the other night worrying about this. We'll be begging the grandparents to help out in the holidays! They're good with the occasional babysitting but refuse to do regular childcare. These are my parents. My husband's parents are too far away to help out.