Normally our little guy (6 year old) would go to soccer school (I know very American but the company like the alliteration!) a couple of times a week. He would spend a week with his Nan and Grandad and we would go camping for a week. All of those things are looking pretty unlikely at the moment although we might see if we can get an Airbnb instead of camping so that we have our own facilities. Just need to find somewhere in the country that other people don’t go!

My wife is currently furloughed but presumably that could change at any time. I currently work from home but again I think I will need to be back in the office more. If my wife has to go back in then I can work from home on those days but I wont be able to do anything with him other than making sure he doesn’t get into trouble.

So how do we keep him entertained over the summer without resorting to a permanent YouTube account?! We have plans for baking with his Mum, him and I are going to camp out in the garden in my new 1 man tent (we can both squeeze in there) and I have tentative plans for taking him type packing or similar.

What are other people doing? Looking for some ideas of little adventures we can do from home to keep him entertained!

Sending him down t’mine to earn his keep.

Our 10 yr old broke up for summer hols. Luckily we had holiday booked last week and went away as a family.

Mrs FD are working full time (me from home) so Jnr FD will just have to entertain himself for the next 9 weeks, although he is booked in for 2 football clubs over that time.

We have no other child care possibilities

11 year old will be spending a week at his football school. Then we’ve got a week away in Cornwall booked. Daughter would be doing a ballet school, but we don’t yet know if that running.

But other than that, before we had kids we took the decision to be a single income family, so we never have childcare issues. It’s meant it’s been pretty tight at times, but overall been a benefit. I do wonder if an outcome of this current situation will lead more families back to being single income by choice.

My kids still have a week left at school, well home school….My wife and I are both working from home but only work 4 days a week. We’ve both taking and extra day a week off so we can be around for the kids four days a week, the other day they’ll just have to sort themselves out. Lad is 12 so he’ll be out with his mates most of the time, or playing fornite! Daughter is 9 so she’ll need looking after. We don;t have any other child care possibilities unless any clubs open up…..

13 year old should have been in Iceland for a week at Eurogym and then at Peak Jamboree for a week. 17 year old should have been at County Orchestra for a week then a national orchestra for a week.

As it stands, they’ll be occupying themselves with TV, YouTube, gaming, socially distanced meet ups with friends and some DofE type hiking locally in case the September practice expedition happens.

More annoyingly, both of them and MrsMC were all due to be away for the same week. It’s usually the one week of the year I can get 200 miles ridden. Bloody annoyed at all the cancellations!

We just bought a caravan. Best £2.5k i’ve ever spent. (Even after only one night in it!)

We joined the Caravan Club and now have access to hundreds of sites for only £12 per night.

We’ve booked the lesser known sites in our local area (Devon and Cornwall) for pretty much every weekend until October. Also have a full week away in July and another in August. Again, all local, all in Devon and Cornwall.)

Cuz we are staying local, friends can come and join us for a cup of tea and a chat. Kids can play together and we can have a glass of vino. As we staying local we can also still get out for a ride at our local haunts.

Kinda makes up for all of our bigger foreign travel plans being stuffed up. (No villa in Italy this summer and probably no ski trip in December.)

Have fun.

My wife is a teacher so we don’t really have this issue thankfully.
Our 2.5 week European road trip to Lake Garda has been postponed to Aug-21 and replaced with a week in Bleanavon (South Wales) and any activities the kids were planning to do over the summer have been cancelled.

We had Merlin passes which expired in May but Merlin have extended them to Oct.
We’re booked to be at Alton towers for 2 days at the end of July and will do some day trips to Chessington/Thorpe Park etc over the summer.

The only good thing about cancelling our big holiday is work are letting us carry over any holiday for up to 2 years.
This means i’ve got 37-38 days in 2021!

Its not so much a childcare issue as coming up with ideas of what to do whilst at home! Feel like we have used up all of our ideas over lockdown.

We’ve had the kids at home, whilst we work. A few of things that have kept them entertained:

– Get a large bit of cut-off wood from a DIY store and get them to create a world with paint, stones, grass, a mini den made of twigs etc. Could be a set of horse stables, a mini MTB track, whatever.

– For my son (7) Lego technics. Difficult/takes long enough for the 7 year old to keep occupied for a good amount of time.

– For my daughter (9), Playmobil has been great. You can get it second hand for a good price if you look around. Again, using bits of old wood she can build her own structures for the figures, invent worlds, etc.

– They’ve been off school for months, so some sort of holiday workbook (with maths questions, science questions etc.) and a set time for working (for about 45 mins to an hour).

– There are two of them so also we insist on a short walk/bike ride in the morning to get them out of the house.

– Simple cooking, like biscuits. Creates a mess but keeps them busy!

– Watching stuff, yes, but always for a limited time, after all the above have been done and never in the morning.

I think establishing a routine has absolutely key for us, stuff like making the biscuits on a Wednesday for example; it breaks up the inevitable downtime into smaller chunks.

Our 5 year old is still going to be doing lessons with us. We are working so he can too.
got a couple of weeks off visiting family and camping at the farm. Plus will be taking some random days to go paddleboarding and stuff.

Go for a walk, ride a bike, go to the park, play football, play cricket, play rugby, bake cakes, draw pictures, play tick/tig/tag (whatever you call it), watch films (all of star wars), build lego, get muddy, climb trees, go to the beach….

All the stuff kids like doing, you don’t have to do anything special just have fun even if other parents are constantly social media-ing pics of their fantastic adventures to gain approval from all their on-line ‘friends…..

we have booked a cruiser on the river shannon. did it years ago on Norfolk broads before kids, was a decent laugh. couple of days at either side at grandads in Dublin too will make for a decent 10 days. They have another grandad in north Wales too and will no doubt be packed off there for a week… we also have a couple of camping weekends booked. we were lucky to get the August BH when they honored a canceled trip due to the lockdown.

No need to keep them at home.

Cricket, Walking, days at the river, days at the beach, days out for something to eat and probably go-ape type places.

We have booked a few shorter breaks for our family (two 11 yr old girls) – having a few days in an AirB&B in Northumberland, a few nights in a ‘Shepard’s Hut’ near Scarborough and a couple of nights at a campsite at How Stean Gorge near Pateley Bridge (where we can do gorge walking and via ferrata) all split up over the seven weeks they are on holiday.

All the clubs the girls would normally do are still cancelled apart from horse riding that one of our girls does so we don’t know how to entertain them for the rest of the time yet.

Trying to book a camper van for October half term.