How to survive the school holidays

Today – How to survive the school holidays

So the school holidays are about rolling into their final weeks and I don’t know about you but my energy and purse strings are feeling the strain a little.

Cue the wonderful Liz Fraser, celebrated author and modern family expert at care.com to give us some survival tips for the last stretch!

Liz Fraser, How to survive the school holidays

How to survive the school holidays

Make the most of play schemes – They are a Godsend, frankly. Far from being ‘somewhere to park the children’, the good ones can be the most fun your child will have all summer. From sport to art, music to film-making, there’s a huge range of holiday activities on offer, and many of them still have places in the second half of the holiday. It’s not the cheapest option, but then neither is handing over a tenner every time your child walks in the room, because they want to go to the cinema, swimming pool or bowling alley.
Share the childcare – A rota of play dates with friends is essential. You’re all in the same boat, so share the work days/childcare days, and you can all help each other out, and not go mad – assuming you haven’t already! Even if you only get half a day to stock up on food without a toddler emptying all the supermarket shelves as you go by, it’s enough to just BREATHE for a moment

  • .trolley

Go on a short holiday – Going abroad is all very useful for learning to say ‘Don’t hit your sister with the TV remote!’ in a foreign language, but you don’t need two weeks in Greece to get the benefits of holiday; just a few days on the beach, or in another town, can be the mental lift you all need. Car travel isn’t so bad these days, with all the portable electronic gizmos with DVDs, games, music and so on available. It can backfire though – my children once refused to get out of the car when we arrived in Bordeaux until Harry Potter had finally finished killing a giant snake.

bike, How to survive the school holidays

Holiday with three generations – The summer holidays are a fantastic opportunity for children and grandparents to hang out together. Not only does this ease any worries you might have about elderly relatives being alone over the summer, but they might also offer some respite for you and your partner when you fancy a moment to yourselves without the kids.

Get app-happy – Find a treasure hunt app like Geocaching . This is basically The Famous Five meets Treasure Hunt, for 2014 kids. There are lots of different ones available, so have a look around and choose one that suits the ages of your kids. It’s also perfect for children who hate being separated from their phones… but who still want to run around outside.

Detox your digital lifestyle – On the flipside of encouraging use of apps, nothing drives me madder than seeing all three of my children with their heads buried in a screen of some kind. Try to go without all electronic devices for a few days, and see what happens. You might even find that your children start to TALK to each other…and end up creating things, inventing games and so on. Boredom is the seed of most creativity, after all.

 

Thanks Liz. These are great tips… my favorite is definitely ditch the screens for a few days…kids can become so screen dependent for entertainment and the stress in managing, monitoring it can be horrible for everyone.

 

About Care.com
Care.com, is like a care and carers matchmaking service. a website for those looking for care, whether for children, parents, pets, or housekeeping.

 

I hoep you have enjoyed this post on How to survive the school holidays

You might also like my post on holidaying with kids on a budget

Follow:
Share:

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.