Summer holidays and organising your child’s time doesn’t itself have to be stressful. With the help of educational psychologist, Laverne Antrobus, Bassetts Soft & Chewy have 5 top tips for great school holidays:

1. Create a calendar together to represent the school holidays and put in planned events like birthdays and when parents are on holiday from work.
2. Remember routine is important. Make some rules around bedtimes and getting up in the morning. Despite their protestations, children need to feel that there is a ‘system’ that holds them.
3. Get everyone in the family to write down all the activities they enjoy. Encourage everyone to write down activities that include the whole family (e.g. playing board games) and try to think of low cost activities for the list (like going to the park or riding bikes for example) - you don’t want the school holidays to leave you feeling broke.
4. Make special time with each of your children; spend 10 minutes together when you do this, making sure that you give your child your undivided and uninterrupted attention doing something that they choose.
5. Offer a mixture of organised activities but make sure that children do have some free time available for ‘creative’ play. Children need a certain amount of unstructured time to learn to amuse themselves - you’ll be surprised at just how creative they can be!