Having your school aged children in care for the summer

[torontokids]

I am a bit nervous having my daughter join my current group for the summer. She is 5 and grew up in the daycare (and could be my most challeging kid at times!) but my group is quite a bit younger than her. She was home on Fri for a PA day and there were many perks e.g. she helped kids cut things, helped me hand things out etc but I also noticed some negatives like her negativity around some activities e.g. "I don't want to do that" impacted the group as they would copy her or "I don't like this food" etc. My younger daughter also seemed to act out more when her sister was in the DC. I was clear with her that if she is in the DC she is following the DC rules which helped a bit but I was exhausted at the end of the day. She is also not as aware of the rules/routine as the DCkids so I will obviously cut her some slack.

I have her in 2 different day camps (I added another one after I saw Fri's interactions). we are closing for 2 wks for vacation and my FIL has offered to take her out once in a while to do something special but I am not sure how often that will actually happen. I am in the process of looking to hire an assistant who I may utilize to take my own kids out to give them/me a break. She is welcome to play in her room or watch TV upstairs however she really wants to be in the daycare. Reading this back, I sound like I want nothing to do with my kid! I swear I love her to pieces and we do so much together, however my current DC kids are all 2.5 yrs old and younger so she basically just has her sister who is 3.5 yrs old.

Any other suggestions from people who have done this?

[Crayola kiddies]

yup i have my three home during the summer and they are almost 6, 7.5 and 10.5 ....they love to come play with the daycare kids but they always start doing things that are not day care/age appropriate ...im dreading the summer but it is what it is ...my biggest issue is nap time as my kids are not the quietest. we go outside in the morning from about 830-11 and that works out great and then i feed the dcks lunch and once they are all in bed i go upstairs and i make lunch for my kids and i and that way we are spending time together...if the weather is agreeable we sit outside and have lunch and therefore we are not making noise inside....its the best i can do ...my older son will probably go to his friends house once a week and i will try to send the younger two off on a play date here and there....we have the first two weeks of the summer off for holidays and my hubby is off for a third week in aug andhe is taking the kids camping so thats 3 weeks taken care of ....i may look into a camp for my younger two ..the older one is not interested in camp.