Anonymous wrote:Parent of a school aged child here. The problem with in home providers for school aged kids is that if the provider has babies or toddlers in care already, your school aged child won't be doing much over the summer that they will find interesting or fun. It is hard for an in home provider to take school aged kids and younger kids on an outing someplace that school aged children will find interesting or fun -- i.e. imagine that merry band going to the pool. That was the biggest issue that I ran into when I started my summer care research. If you can find someone with only school aged children, that might work out. I never could.

As expensive as it is, I recommend hiring a college student as a summer nanny. We have done that each year and have had great results. The young woman who looked after our daughter this past summer was hands down AMAZING. Our kid was exhausted and happy at the end of each day and gave me strict instructions each morning not to come home early. They went to the pool, did arts and crafts, went to movies, the library, went for walks, went to the park, cooked together, and on and on. I swear I cried the day she told me she had been offered a "real" job to start in the fall.

Perhaps you can share a summer nanny with another family? If that is not possible, I recommend looking at day care centers for school aged summer care. Most of them have a summer full of activities and treat summer care as a day camp. When we were at a day care center, the school aged kids had a field trip every week and the field trips were ones that I wanted to go on. Plus they went to the movies once every other week and they had a contract with a pool nearby so the kids went swimming once a week on top of the field trips. And they had fun activities all day.