How do best.manage school holidays?

[MerryGuide]

In reception so just starting to deal with holiday childcare as we've covered them so far.

For the longer holidays do you find its better to have a clear blocks of parents and paid care, so e.g. Easter 1 week of each?

Or better if its spread out per week, e.g 1 day with each parent, 1 with grandparents, 1 at holiday club long day, 1 at hobby club (shorter day)?

I guess summer will be the big one! So do you stick to set holiday clubs or do they get bored/repetitive? Is it worth sticking something like a week of tennis camp or similar in the mix.

Keen to hear how others make it work best with 2 x (almost) full time jobs.

Title typos are shocking I'm so sorry!

Start working it out early.
If you live sonewhere with loads of choice, brilliant. If you live somewhere like me, and the longest option only runs 8.30-3, and that fills up within days of opening, you are absolutely fucked.
So, go by what is available, rather than what you think will work. Some places fo run in week long batches, and it's a good idea (but not essential) to go for sll 5 days. Some are very much more a day to day thing.

We managed holidays when DS1 could go back to nursery sone holidays as his brother was there. Once both were at school, I actually had to quit work as we couldn't physically cover the holidays, let alone sickness or going in for sports day, plays etc.

Agree with working it out early. We found blocks of holiday clubs best. If it’s something like sport then they’re able to progress over the week. Even if just a childcare Playscheme type thing it gives them a chance to make friends as other kids tend to go for the whole week

You need to first check asap if the holiday clubs available to you actually take reception aged children for the full day. It's quite common for clubs to not take them because of the difference in ratio needed for you younger children.

Then if they do a block of consistent care for the week is in my opinion more useful as it leaves relatives and parents free to use leave for inset days and any sickness days.

Loom for what’s available and arrange with DH for what is available and when. Budget to use un paid parental leave. Both use a week each in the summer. Then between us we have 40 days holidays. Then use a childminder and clubs.

You do what works with your schedules. Dh and I have traditionally done work where it’s easier to take a day or two off each week than a whole week. So typically we’d do 2-3 days a week of holiday club (it’s only open 3 days) then we’d each take off 1-2 days per week.

If you need to use parental leave it can only be booked in 1 week blocks, so you have to take the whole week, but I’ve personally never used parental leave.

Obviously, if we’re going on holiday, we’d both take off a chunk of time together, but that is rare. It’s usually just the 1-2 days each week and that works really well. I’ve always had AL left over and never run out doing it like that.

Also if you want to use holiday club, do be on top of booking it. Ours the bookings open 3-4 months before and it’s a mad scrum. Bookings go live at 7pm and all slots gone by 7:04.

We used to take 2 weeks each summer and have a holiday in the middle so had DD a week each either side.
Depending where you live holiday clubs can be very different. Where I live they hardly exist, often only for a week or two and are not full days 9.30-3pm. There are a lot of football clubs which DD wasn’t interested in.
She went to a music one, it was 3 days and on the last day parents were expected at a performance at 1.30pm, so not great for childcare.

I never understood why there is such poor offer. Here holiday clubs are 9-10 till 3-3.30. I work 8.30 -5.30, I need something that covers 8-6. Is it soooo hard? I am happy go pay but no offer. I have an understanding employer but I feel like a fraud for the rest of the team, although I work from home anyway but the pick up, drop off time means I can’t take calls and it really impacts everybody. I have no other option though. I have tried to find some babysitters but no luck so far

We used to do blocks for set themes eg sports clubs, dance clubs etc as they tended to be a weeks program. For general holiday club at school we mixed it with grandparents. So for us a 6 week summer holiday was generally 1 week of a theatre club (show in a week type thing), 3 weeks of 3 days at school holiday club and 2 with grandparents (they wouldn’t do a week) and then 2 weeks family holiday

I think hobby clubs and holiday clubs are good for younger kids as they need a fair bit of entertaining!

My DS did some sport ones when he was younger and really enjoyed them.

I had decent A/L and was allowed an additional weeks unpaid leave so use to take at least a day a week off and then they’d do their dads or my mums if I was working. I use to keep a spreadsheet off where they were when! 😂

Summer holidays we do 4 weeks of:
1 x MIL
1 x my mum
3 x holiday clubs

last two weeks we go on holiday

Girl Guides trip/1 week
Ballet Summer School/1 week
Holiday club/1 week

The rest of time is family holiday.
This has worked for 5 years now for us.

Summer holidays we do
2 weeks joint holidays
1 week one parent
rest clubs

rest of school holidays is a mix, one or both of us take it off (depending on what’s happening at work) or clubs.

we don’t have grandparents who help, so we did school holiday clubs or childminder initially but now children are older and find it boring. So we do themes eg one week dance club, one week tennis club etc.

also helps if they know other kids in the club. You can use HMRC childcare account for most clubs.

I think it'll depend on the child tbh.

Some kids love camps and could easily go everyday for a week or two before needing a rest. Others struggle a bit and so limiting camp days to one or two week with a couple of days with parents/grandparents is better for them.

My guys are big fans of routine so we do the same camp on the same days through the summer e.g. football camp every Tuesday and Thursday.

We take two weeks annual leave, I book 2 weeks parental leave and then do two weeks of holiday clubs. We've got one that does long days (8-6) so we use that cover my office days and then a mix of sports camp & activity camp which are shorter on the other days. I use my lunch break to facilitate picks ups and bribe the kids with TV for a bit 👍🏻

If you are going to do holiday clubs but not the full week, make sure that you book Monday onwards. Do get to make friends/find someone to play with.

Dh worked shifts so slightly different, we found DD liked two/three days at home and then the remaining days at a club. DD is an only though and she needed to see other kids otherwise she would go stir crazy come the thursday. Dh shifts mostly worked around that routine as he worked weekends but I picked up the slack. A few childcare swaps as well.

I always took a few days extra at Easter and Christmas and one week in the summer as we went to my parents. We could rarely afford abroad holidays (I think we went abroad twice when DD was at primary) and my parents lived near the seaside (our holiday) so AL at the same time was never an issue.

I think taking individual days off rather than block weeks is best.
That way they're not missing you too much by going to holiday club for a whole week for example. Also easier to find someone to have them for a day here and their than a full week.
So as an example you could take the Monday off, holiday club Tuesday, dad Wednesday, nan Thursday, school mum friend Friday.
You've only taken one day off work, kids aren't in holiday club a full week, the people that help you with childcare have only had to do 1 day.

Mine go to the same club every time, and look forward to seeing the friends they’ve made that do the same!

I was able to buy 2 weeks annual leave so did this as it was cheaper than childcare for 2. In the summer we used to book 2 weeks each that overlapped and would have our holiday on that middle week. They did do clubs and when they were young they went to childminder some days. As they established friends we did also swap childcare days with parents we got to know.

I think it really depends on your children and the first year will be trial and error. The first summer holiday went totally wrong for us, and I learnt my lesson! In our household it works best to take a family holiday at the beginning of the holidays when everyone’s tired.
my kids can only handle 2 days of clubs in a row so on the other weeks we take a mix of 2 day clubs and parents taking odd days off.
i usually take the last week of August off too. We only get the odd day of family help as everyone still works so it’s asking them to take time off which I don’t really like to do.

I find it’s only the summer which is a mission and the others are doable as max 2 weeks.

We don't use holiday clubs as DC have SEN and nothing locally is suitable.

We find blocks of a week for each of us work better, as if you are doing odd days out of every week you don't get any sort of break from work. I find it easier for work planning to take chunks of time off rather than be flitting and out on different days.

My boss is happy to turn a blind eye to an occasional day WFH with kids in tow as long as it's not often, which helps if we're short a day of childcare. I wouldn't do it more than 1 or 2 days over the whole summer though as it's boring for DC and I don't want to take the piss.

For us grandparents aren't local so it's easier to get them to come stay for a week than do odd days.

DH buys 2 weeks of annual leave a year, I would too if it were an option where I work.

I think you end up using what's available to you and there's often not much choice about it! My work is very flexible and we don't have relatives around to help, so I cover all school holidays and DH doesn't cover any (though he will use AL for family holidays when we are all off together). We use hobby holiday clubs to keep dcs busy and for them to develop skills/meet other dcs (drama, gymnastics, art etc) but they often have very short days (some are 9am-1pm) or are 1hr to travel to, so not useful for childcare. We also do swimming crash courses every Easter and summer, which is only 30 mins of actual teaching and lots of travel/changing time so it takes up the whole morning but is a great way of quickly improving skill level. In our area there is a huge variety of clubs so there is always something available, though it isn't cheap.
I prefer dcs to do those though than the generic holiday clubs where they aren't getting skill-specific tuition.

We had lots of messages flying around in the class WhatsApp group with people saying what clubs and days they were booking, so we could make sure to book in with friends/familiar faces. My kids have never coped well with lots of holiday club days in a row, they get overwhelmed and struggle a lot (some SEN at play), so we do 1-2 days at clubs when we know they will know people, and the other days with one or other of us at home each week. Usually they stay with grandparents for a few days during the longer holidays too.