Private school holidays - what do your children do with all that time

[Luna9]

DD is starting at an independent school in September, year 7. I only work part time but planning on increasing hours a bit; what do you do during the school holidays? What do your children do? We do have quite a few holidays overseas but no way I can cover 18 weeks holidays. Youngest one will still be in the state sector in primary for 4 more years.

Usually there are holiday clubs run by the schools, though these are often for the younger age groups, rather than secondary.
We use a combination of working from home, school holiday clubs, activity camps (such as Ultimate Activity, Supercamps, Kings Camp etc), annual leave. We don't have grandparents to send them to, though many of their classmates either visit GPs for several weeks, or have their GPs stay at their home to watch them during the day.
If they're strong in sports or music then there are also associated residential camps for these that help too.

lots to do - mine usually do multiactivity camps (supercamps etc), sports camps (tennis / netball / swimming etc) or science / programming camps or also any sort of drama / music activities (sylvia young theatre school, italia conti...). They all cost money of course, so hopefully you earn more than the camps cost!

Often the school trips are i the holidays rather than in termtime

You’ll only have to worry about it for a year or 2 and then she’ll be happy home on her own or hanging out with friends.

Watch crap on YouTube. Play crap on X Box. Post crap on Snapchat and Instagram. Get bored. Argue with one another. Try to argue with me. Fall out with friends online. Make a mess everywhere. The holidays feel very, very long. We can't do anything that requires spending money, as it all goes on school fees...

Thank you. 18 weeks is indeed a long time; it puts me off more than the fees; but not point of complaining as not other options and decision is made. We can probably cover 9 weeks between holidays and sending her to grandparents abroad. The other 9 weeks will be a combination of holidays camps, trips, home and friends.

DS was taught basic gardening skills, and earned pocket money (lots of it) doing garden tasks for all the older people locally who can no longer manage or want to do such things themselves. He mows, strims, weeks and chops wood basically. And when available is much in demand!

And he charges £7.00+ an hour, not kiddie minimum wage.

In my experience most parents take advantage of the earlier start to the summer holiday to book cheaper holidays abroad at this time. Which is a pain if you've got another child in the state system as you can't do that, but your child will be finding there's no one around for company those weeks. There are sometimes holiday clubs run at the school or catering for private school kids so they can be helpful those weeks. Preferably gearerd around some particular interest at that age.

I used to try up take a day or two off each week so DD wasn't kicking around on her own too much. I took some unpaid leave one year to help. But these days she's usually out with friends a lot (she's 14 now) so doesn't find them a problem.

Dd only has 1 week more than her brother who is at State Primary

It’s a bit of a struggle if you are a working parent... My dd is currently in year 7 and so far I have managed by getting her to do some holiday clubs/courses. The summer holidays will be harder and I am hoping to maybe take some unpaid leave if I can...

My kids are in private prep with an 8/9 week summer - madness. I'm a Indy teacher though so get same holidays which is great for childcare. We go abroad first two weeks when states are still running to save money. The kids then pick one proper day trip a week (theme parks, zoo etc), I book them into camps for a few days. The rest is play dates, park, time in the garden, seeing grandparents.

AthenaAshton right on sister!

Love a woman who tells it how it is!

Mine is a boarder, so not quite the same.
She also didn't keep in touch with old school friends when she started.
I thought it would be problematic during holidays, but far from it.

Mine just enjoys chilling, her own company, visiting her older brother and fiancee, digging the garden, practising her music, visiting anywhere with grass, fields, and/or long walks.

She will take herself off/ ask family member to go to theatre or cinema with her.
Bowling, out for a Pizza with extended family members.
reading, watching tv, social media etc.

We middle through, off the grandparents for some of it, 2 weeks holiday st the end of August, seeing friends, cousins, netflix! DD has almost 9 weeks summer hols for us to fill. We don’t tend to take advantage of the cheaper summer hols at the start of July because we find it better to go late and have something to look forwards to

*muddle sorry

We have a student who comes to hang out part time during the holidays so at least they are not left alone all day. It's still a challenge to think of things to get them away from fortnite though.

One of the problems here is that so many of their friends go abroad or away to agreeable second homes for the holidays, so there are fewer for people to hang out with

Howling at Athena’s description and looks around nervously to see if she’s bugged my house!

Used to hire students through childcare.com - they were great company for the kids and the money helped them through uni

I have one at state primary and the eldest at independent, but their holidays aren’t that different fortunately. Eldest goes away to scout camp for the first 10 days of the summer holiday so we work during that time. The school also run sport and drama weeks so he might go to some of those but as he’s now 14 he can be left to entertain himself, which means Snap, Insta and Fortnite.

We also have a beach hut nearby, so are often there and set up a heated above ground pool in the garden which they spend loads of time in.

Holiday wise, we take our main family holidays in the autumn and spring so DH and I operate a tag team arrangement and we also WAH - the boys are a bit older so don’t need much supervision.

One day a week my Dad has them and my Dsis and her kids live on the lane so they’ll go and bother her and hers will come here too.

Summer au pair if you have a spare room

Same as Athena!

Mine are older now but do not underestimate how tired they are by the end of term, the days are longer and the shorter terms mean that they are often shattered by the end of term and need a few days to recover , i have always tried to let the first week be chilled at home for this reason.As they get older there tend to be things like CCF camp, cricket training, pre season training for other sports in the last two weeks of the holiday and holiday camp.

Yeah, same as Athena.

This is the first year with the all out of state primary so there will be even more synchronised Doing Fuck All.

Which doesn’t help with your working hours dilemma. They should be able to be at home alone for some of the time. I remember DS2 going to a friends to keep him company - they cooked pizza and oven chips and were fine.