Half-term holiday fun for children
IT seems only a minute ago that I was walking my eldest to school for the start of a new term. But in just over a week she will be off school for half term and my free child-care will come to an end.
Suddenly I will have to become the sole entertainer for all three of my children. And I will have my work cut out finding something to do which will suit a baby, a two-year-old and a five-year-old. When I was young both my parents worked, so my brother and I were shipped off to Scotland to stay with our grandparents. For us this was enormous fun. We had a whole week off of not being nagged and made to tidy our bedrooms.
Instead we were able to visit all our aunts and uncles and various friends of our grandparents who did nothing but make enormous fusses of us and bought us lots of lovely treats.
This was all achieved while Grandpa was still working full time and while Granny was running a bed and breakfast business too. And they repeated the whole thing the following week with our Scottish cousins, who never seemed to have the same break times as us. It is only now as the prospect of the half term week on my own looms, that I now fully appreciate what they went through for us.
A friend had a different experience to mine. His mother was a primary school teacher in the same town where he grew up so she was always off at the same time as her children.
And being a teacher she always very organised about what she was going to do with her offspring come holiday time. She seemed to know staying indoors was not an option. Children are much like dogs. They need lots of fresh air and exercise and walking at least once a day, otherwise they turn into monsters.
So their half term week would consist of swimming one day – designed to exhaust them. Another day would be a trip to a local stately home – or rather the vast gardens of this home where her children could run off their energy to their hearts' content. The cinema would be another option and by that time more than half the week off had gone by.
A different friend of mine tells me her memories of half term consisted of being dragged into town for the regular shoe fitting ordeal as her feet had inevitably grown since she was last fitted before Christmas.
Another 'treat' was a visit to the dentist. "Well there is never any chance while you are at school," her mother would argue.
In a bid not to make this my children's experience a friend of mine, who also has three children of similar ages to me, has decided we must join forces and find something to do together. The thought of six small children causing havoc in either of our houses fills us both with dread so I am sure we will come up with something suitable.
At the moment firm favourites seem to be Weston Park Museum, which is both indoors and free and has enough to entertain both toddlers and youngsters alike. It also has a great caf for baby feeding times.
Another great find has been the local library. I live very near to one and already I have booked the kids in for a family activity morning. Other events being held for children during half term week include a recycled sculpture workshop, collage portrait making and a street poetry and hip hop rhyme session, whatever that is.
For information about the library services run by Sheffield City Council visit: http://www.sheffield.gov.uk/libraries For information about other activities, visit: www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/coresite/html/ < http://www.museums-sheffield.org.uk/coresite/html/>
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Friday 10 February 2012
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