holidays

articles

• Midterm holiday break and cooking workshops
• Holiday entertainment, programs and camps
• Survivor and action parties plus sleepover holiday camps
• School holiday camps and day programs
• Kids holiday activities – daily programs
• Father’s day and holiday camps
• Working mom’s plea for all day holiday care
• Planning Christmas holidays

Schools holidays start for most schools on Friday. If you want to send your child to a sleepover camp or a day program, nows the time to book. For We have a list of at least 10 different  sleepover camps on offer – many start on October 2, 3, or 4th. Here’s a sampling of what you will find.

CAMPS
Camps- Sleepover
Mazz Riding Club pony sleepover camp, Centurion- 5 days.
Jod’s Riding school- 6 days
In the forest  in Eikenhof- 5 days
Kids Fishing sleepover camp, Vaal- 3 days
Flip Flop Basecamp SA, Harbeespoort- 4 days
Sugar Bay, Zinkwazi beach, KZN- 7 days
Esperanza, horse riding Mooiplaats Pta- 5 days
Immaculate Equestrian, Vaal- 4 days
Adventure n Beyond, Krugersdorp- 5 days
Kambi Kids Bush Camp, Muldersdrift- 7 days
Shepherds Fold, Elandsdrift – 3days

Then there are holiday programs which take place during the day that focus on certain disciplines like:

DAY PROGRAMS
Drama
musical theatre workshops – one in Heidelberg and another where the venue is still to be confirmed.

Science/Tech
Technolab holiday club :Learn about some of the inventions and inventors that changed the world for grade 3-6, robotics for grade 7-12 in Auckland Park.

Sports
You’ll find tennis, horse riding, soccer programs in Joburg and the East rand.

Tuition services
Finally this is a crucial time for anyone writing matric and we have loads of tuition services on our site that are offering holiday matric revision :
Master Maths in Randpark Ridge and Pretoria,
Study Doctor Tutoring has a day workshop on October 1 in Randburg,
KipMcGrath in Rosebank offers a 4 day course.

You’ll find a long list on Jozikids – just visit the tuition section on our holiday activities page.

Remember you can find more ideas of what to do with your family in the Gauteng region on www.Jozikids.co.za on your computer or your cell phone.

By Zoë Harper, PA to Marketing Exec and loving mom to only child, 11 year old and Type 1 Diabetic, Catherine

As a working mom with limited leave and a child who seems to be on a constant spate of school holidays (especially after the 5 weeks school closure for the World Cup last year) I am always looking out for holiday programs or child care facilities during these periods.

I have gone through most of the suggested holiday activities listed on the site (as I do when any holiday / term break is on the horizon) and found that many are only half day (morning or afternoons only) or only run for part of the holidays or are completely out of my neighborhood . Whilst this may be great for full time mom’s or half day mom’s, they aren’t really much use to me and I’m sure thousands of other mothers with similarly limited time. The Kid’s Village Day camp option looks great but is way out in the sticks which would means either setting off at 6am to be able to get there timeously and back through the traffic to be at the office for 8am and leaving work early to get there by closing time of 5pm for the entire two weeks of March / April holidays. Let’s not even talk petrol costs and stress levels here!

I really feel schools need to make more of an effort to arrange facilities (summer school / holiday programs) for children as we are left with very few alternatives. Not all of us can afford au pairs / full time maids / have freely available grandparents etc. And yes, I’d be willing to pay for them (and we don’t even get a reprieve of cutting school fees during these breaks).

I wish there were facilities whereby you could leave your children in good, safe hands in major centers (community centers / libraries?) during school holidays where they are stimulated, educated and entertained whilst taking a break from the usual school routine (at a reasonable fee too – from my mouth to God’s ears).

I think it’s a good business idea to get into but unfortunately I don’t have the resources or contacts to set this kind of thing up and obviously it’s only during certain times of the year.

I guess I’m just venting and sadly wishing away the time to when my child is old enough to be able to fend for herself at home – but that would probably still entail sitting in front of the tv all day or getting up to mischief

In conclusion – if there are such programs and I am unaware of them – please kindly direct me to them.

by Charmaine Viljoen, Project Manager when she has to earn the money, mom to 3 kids, social network addict, compulsive runner (to keep sane), still waiting to marry well and co-founder of  Alex and Alexa, a children’s clothing range.

Firstly I would like to make it clear that I am not the world’s most organised mother and neither does our life run as smoothly as it is going to appear in this blog post! However, with three children under the age of ten I have to combat my normal personality tendencies of ‘lets just see what happens’ and attempt some type of planning to prevent lurching from disorder to chaos.

This year we have decided to continue with some sort of schooling throughout the holiday and so the children have selected books that they want to read (Reader’s Warehouse in Broadacres Centre in Dainfern is fantastic for inexpensive children’s books) and are taking turns to read stories to the others. My youngest is just six and cannot read yet but can spin a good yarn if given a picture book story book. My kids also enjoy learning phonics and reading at www.starfall.com which has a lot of free stuff. We are also registered on www.ixl.com for math practice (mathletics is also a good website for this) and they all enjoy getting their certificates emailed for each math level that they achieve.

Since I am very determined that each child will play a musical instrument that forms part of our normal daily routine as well. I do dream up novel and interesting ways to make music practice fun and there is a lot of simple music available off the internet so that the four of us can harmonise through Christmas Carols (harmonise does range in meaning…)

I have had an interesting year financially, definitely looking up now but it does mean that there is not a lot of money to spend on presents or holiday experiences. Without scaring the children (I hope!) I have explained this to them and we have decided that we will have one outing which they can decide upon – they are currently debating between artjamming in Lonehill or going to see a play at the Children’s Theatre. It has been very interesting to watch them go through a decision making process that is still not finalised! (We use the JoziKids website for any social happenings that we want to attend)

We are also working on sorting out clothing and toys that they no longer use. These will get repaired and cleaned and wrapped for delivery to our local children’s home. (I am not allowed to go because I tend to come back from these expeditions with another baby…my mom takes them instead!)

A new exercise for us this holiday season is that we have decided, as a family, to learn to speak a different language. After much debate we decided on French and I have found a fantastic audiobook that we all listen to and have a lot of fun seeing who can remember the most. The kids were hoping that I would not be able to focus on this and that they would be able to speak to each other without me understanding them and I think that this is still the secret driver that is in play. Luckily I have a bit of a commute to work and an iPod. Languages such as Spanish or French have a wealth of materials to support children and make this engaging and fun.

We are not a regular TV watching family so every few days in the holidays we do go to the local DVD shop and catch up on kids movies as a treat.

And of course, because we have the best weather in the world we get to do lots of cycling, swimming and going to the park.

Have a happy holiday season!