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Vacation care for older primary kids


Lucygoose

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My kids went to vacation care on the holidays, And my oldest is 11, in year 6 this year. There were no year 6 or year 5 kids there at all.

I know once they are at high school it is a different situation, but do people generally leave their upper primary school kids at home alone?

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My kids went to vacation care on the holidays, And my oldest is 11, in year 6 this year. There were no year 6 or year 5 kids there at all.

I know once they are at high school it is a different situation, but do people generally leave their upper primary school kids at home alone?

 

If we had to we could have left DS alone in Y5 (if no option) or Y6 but did not need too, if DS did not want to go to vacation care FT (he has never been at all so talking hypothetically) then we would have negotiated some days.


He is now in Y8 as has been home alone a few times half days last year and on the holidays a bit and we will increase it over time.


He was home one whole day with DH WFH but DH says he is not repeating the experience

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Probably more parents could work from home this year so they just did that instead of taking holidays - kids that age can be told to leave their parents alone to work, generally, and entertain themselves.

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At that age my daughter knew she would have her closest friend there with her, so it didn't matter to her that most of the others were younger.


I should imagine by that age, many of the kids are doing part of the organising themselves, and swapping days at friends' houses if other parents are home some days.

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We have experienced the same problem, and with after school care to a lesser degree. I think that a lot more people are working from home and having older children at home with them but not so much the younger ones.


In my area at least the one size fits all holiday programs cater for older kids poorly. My son has been to a sports program with a friend at a nearby private school and it was much better because it was for years 4-8 and didn’t have any craft or colouring in. When they weren’t doing the specific activities they were shooting hoops or playing dodge ball.

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Pretty much. I only work half days though so the kids are only home 4-5 hours. I ring every couple of hours or they ring me. They have set rules they have to follow.


About the only program that tended to have older kids was the council one run at the sports center with the pool/basketball hall etc. even then you were pushing it to have many kids older then 11.

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My year 5 went still. But her sister (grade 1) goes to. Didn't go as much as usual due to working from home half the time and they entertain themselves pretty well at home. If it was just her I'd be happy for her to stay home by herself. She's pretty sensible and I work school hours most days anyway.

Often by that age they have other things to do though. Like all day classes in a sport that they already do.

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There has always been very few older kids at vacation care - it’s not Covid thing,

I think it is a combination of things ... some kids getting left at home. In some cases, because the kids are older, they are organise to go to friends places - having an extra yr5/6 kid is much less work than a younger child. Parents willing to leave them home by working shorter day (so little bit of leave each day). When they hit older primary, possibility of having older siblings at high school, so staying home with them,

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I sent mine all the way through to the end of primary school.


They didn't enjoy it, but I had no choice. My gut was that they could not be trusted to stay at home - and this gut instinct was proven correct by a number of incindents that happened when they hit highschool and couldn't go to vacation care.


Mine used to play with siblings and kids in younger grades. The carers gave them some special big kid jobs / privileges to do which they liked eg baking in the OSHC kitchen.


My work hours + travel time meant that sports, coding day camps were impossible to get to. I needed care from 7am until 6pm and the camps often started 9am and finished mid afternoon. Occassionally they went to friends houses, but for the most part they were vacation care / kid jail as they called it.


The biggest surprise was my youngest got so bored at home during the first lot of school holidays in year 7 that she begged me to enrol her in vacation care at the primary school for the next lot of holidays. They did take first year of highschool kids so she spent the school holidays there and hung around with kids in younger grades who she had known for years. She wasn't the only highschooler there either.

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DD started voicing her opinions about vacation care near the end of year three. For the year 4 we did a combo of taking leave from work, taking advantage of flex work arrangements and play dates. Last year was the pandemic so we were home anyways.


This year (year 6) we will use the leave plus flex work arrangement for school holidays.

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Not Escapin Xmas

DD started voicing her opinions about vacation care near the end of year three. For the year 4 we did a combo of taking leave from work, taking advantage of flex work arrangements and play dates. Last year was the pandemic so we were home anyways.


This year (year 6) we will use the leave plus flex work arrangement for school holidays.

 

Same with us. DD is in year 5. These summer hols she did a week of drama camp, a week of mixed activities, a week with DH, 3 days coming to the office with me. Worked pretty well.

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DS17 we organised vacation care up to halfway through yr7 (March birthday). DS13 we rarely sent to vacation care other than occasional organised activities in yr6

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My first was in care until she was 12, and then we let her be at home. The second one was about 3-6 months of being 12, but it was only because he was doing an activity after school on his one afterschool care a week and his sister took him to it. I have actually just pulled the 9 year old out as he has an after school activity that his sister takes him to and is fully supervised. The older sister has been happy to provide holiday care for him for the bargain price of $20 a day! So for us, presence of older sibling has been our reason for not using care. My just turned 12 year old often spends time at home by himself and likes it. I would not do it if he did not want to.

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DS (year 5) always went to before/after school care and vacation care up to March last year when COVID hit, but since the end of year 3 he didn’t like going but had no choice . There aren’t many kids in year 4 and above who go in our school.


I’m mainly WFH now, so he and his sister (year 1) just hung around at home whilst I worked . He also did a tennis holiday program over 3 days and a golf one over 2 days .

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We are in Vic. When DD1 was doing gymnastics, I booked her into a holiday program for it a few times. There was a wide range in ages, some of them looked like year 6 but could've been year 5. This summer, DD2 now does gymnastics and her class is in the middle of a weekday so I got to see the holiday program. They were all really young, I don't think there was a single kid over about year 3 or 4.


I put DD1 into her school's holiday care, not because I needed someone supervising her as both DH and I were at home, but because I knew it would be hard to keep her off her ipad and I didn't want her spending day after day on it, especially given how much screen time she has had this year. Hardly any kids went compared to previous years, and not many from her year level.

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