Childcare cover for non-school days - what do you do?

[CustardSlice]

I'm trying to get my head round how to cover childcare when my DS starts school. My DP works FT, I work 3 days a week.

There are 190 teaching days at school which my dodgy maths seems to indicate that even allocating all our holiday entitlement and never having a family holiday again (!) we'll be well short of covering all the non-teaching days.

We don't have any family who live anywhere near and we're about to move so we don't have friends with similar aged children in the new location yet.

I'd really appreciate hearing how other people manage this - do you rely on unpaid leave and/or holiday clubs? Or do you think maybe my initial calculations were wrong?

Split leave as much as possible
Holiday clubs
Child swap with friend (you have their child for a day, they have your another day)
Work flexibly where possible

What childcare are you going to be using on the days that you work (assuming you don't work 9:30 until 2:30 or similar)?

Does the school have an out of school club? Are there local childminders? Some nurseries will take older children.

Thanks Red

I figured this would be the way to go. I'm moving from somewhere where I have a good community of other mums to somewhere brand new so the whole "School" thing seems pretty daunting at the moment.

Hopefully I'll all fit into place with a bit of planning and thought.

Perhaps I'm being dumb, but why avoid Mondays?

Work overtime if offered in term time to accrue time owing.
Any possibility of 48 hr trip to grandparents for DC in hols?
Sport clubs eg football by a 'proper' team tend to be cheaper than holiday clubs.

You should get bank holidays prorated so it shouldn't matter which days you work; you would still get the same amount of holiday.

Inset days are quite often on a Monday though so might be advantageous not working Mondays for that reason.

Holiday club. I took her birthday off work to spend with her, but she insisted on going into holiday club!

I was lucky enough to find a fantastic job in a school so have the hols off.

where I work bank holidays are prorata - but if you work part time you "gain" a bank holiday allowance, which you then "lose" for each holiday which falls on your working day.

Therefore by working Mon/Tues/Wed I use all my bank holiday allowance, and then some of my annual leave, to cover the bank holidays. my job share on a Thurs/Fri however "gains" those hours as additional leave as very few bank holidays fall on her working days.

OP, I use part family, part holiday clubs. Holiday clubs here are around £25 for 8-6 per day. Family is obviously cheaper, but I cant rely on them all the time. Its the exact reason I am currently applying for any term time only job I can!!

What about sharing childcare with someone who only needs it in term time?

i.e. a teacher or school staff who has a place at a childminder, they use the space in term time and you use it in the holidays?

There are loads and loads of holiday clubs, and most kids love them.

School holidays really aren't a problem at all. Inset days are the problems, but there are not that many of them.

My childminder usually only takes 2 weeks hol during the summer and the same as me (2 weeks) at Christmas. So she is available for the rest of the summer and easter hols, and half terms.

I do usually end up taking a couple of weeks unpaid parental leave in a year tho'. Last year I took 2 weeks when she started school partly because it was very short days at first, partly 'cos I wanted it to be me who picked her up those first weeks.

Holiday club - no chance of trips to gps here. Fortunatly, ds loves holiday club

I'm single and work 3 days a week, 9-4. My dd (yr 1) goes to a childminder for 1 hour after school on the days I work in termtime and this means she is booked in for those days full time in the holidays. The childminder takes 2 weeks hols per year (and a few days at Xmas) and is very good at giving lots of notice so I can cover this with my annual leave. I work tues/weds/thurs so can cover most inset days myself, but childminder is usually able to cover the odd one where necessary.
This suits dd very well at the monent as there are other children from her class who use the same childminder, and in the hols they often go out to the park/softplay etc. When she is bigger and wants to do after school clubs/holiday clubs etc this may change.

Thanks everyone for your responses, really helpful.

Lots of things for me to think about. I'll check out holiday clubs/childminders. At least I don't work on a Monday so that's one thing in our favour already. Looking at the options I imagine I'll probably end up leading a parallel (childcare) life with Euphemia!

Thanks everyone for helping me with my first ever Mumsnet post.