A Working Parents’ Guide to Planning Summer for Your Kids
It goes without saying that the summer holidays put an extraordinary amount of pressure on working parents. Faced with the challenge of keeping your children both safe and entertained for six long weeks whilst continuing business as usual at work, many parents can feel particularly overwhelmed.
For help with easing the strain of the summer holidays, our working parents’ guide has all the information you could need for navigating the summer holidays with total ease.
Your Parental Rights
Whilst the choice of when to take your annual leave is entirely your own, many people will take a week or two of annual leave during the summer holidays for some immediate relief from the pressures of the six week summer holiday chasm. But even then, you are still left with four or five further weeks to figure something out for.
When it comes to childcare, is important to stay aware of your parental rights, especially in relation to (unpaid) parental leave. Parents are entitled to eighteen weeks’ leave for each child between birth and their eighteenth birthday. You can take up to four weeks of leave for each child per year.
You are also entitled to make flexible working requests by writing to your employer. Your employer has two months to make a decision, so we recommend submitting your request in good time before the summer holidays begin. These requests can help you to work around your children during the summer holidays by working from home, adjusting your start and finish times, and taking longer lunch breaks to accommodate your children.
Entertainment At Home
So, you’ve taken leave from work and you’re at home with your children during the summer holidays. The next challenge is figuring out how to keep them entertained!
The secret to keeping your kids entertained is to create fun summer projects that they can get invested in. Whether your child is a science whizz or a creative wordsmith, setting up fun projects for your children to fall in love with is the best way to get them running back to their project each morning with a spring in their step and an eagerness to play. Here are some of our favourite ideas.
Build a Cardboard City
For younger children with a big imagination, creating a cardboard city from your leftover cardboard allows your children to create their own little world in their bedroom or a spare room of your house. From using colouring pens and pencils to add vibrancy and creative flair to their castle walls to cutting and sticking entrance signs and wall murals, encourage your children to get creative and bring their imaginary world to life.
Write and Illustrate a Book
For slightly older children, writing and illustrating a book is a fantastic way to channel your kids’ creative energy. Over time, your children can develop their story from concept to completion, with help from mum or dad along the way. Not only can this create weeks of fun for your child, but it will help them with their confidence through a sense of pride and accomplishment with their own finished book.
Garden Science Festival
For children who are fascinated by science, a garden science festival is a fantastic way to give your kids a week of fun-filled experiments and activities whilst enhancing their school education and enjoying the summer weather. Depending on age suitability, your science festival’s itinerary could involve anything from bug hunting with a magnifying glass to creating mini volcanoes and eruptions with baking sugar and vinegar.
Summer Camps
For the weeks when you have to be in the office, to ensure your kids are safe and fulfilled throughout the summer break, summer camps can be an excellent solution. The fantastic roster of activities on offer will ensure your kids have plenty to do during the summer school holidays. Summer camps also simulate a regular school day, enabling you to work, get groceries, or get through any other tasks on your to do list without worrying about entertaining your children at the same time.
Designed to boost confidence, foster friendships, and provide non-stop entertainment through adventures, activities and play, summer activity camps are a space in which your child can truly enjoy their school holidays. And what’s more is that summer camps aren’t solely days of endless fun: they’ve actually been created to ensure your child is getting the opportunity to develop social skills and critical thinking abilities and get stuck into sports and exercise, delivering both a fun and enriching experience for your young ones.
