The ongoing term time holiday debate

We’ve obviously followed with great interest the reaction of schools and parents to the term-time holiday ban. The debate will long continue, but this is what our skiing families are telling us:

We knew the consensus of opinion – a law aimed at helping failing schools counteract truancy was penalising thousands of sensible families. Those parents with young pre-exam children have strongly voiced the unfairness. And most have continued to take their children when it best suited their family.

What we hadn’t expected were the number of parents who’ve told us that although their child’s school couldn’t officially authorise a term-time ski holiday, the school have quietly said that knowing how much the children get out of this, they’re to go with their blessing.

At Snowbizz we’ve always had the same number of families, with children under eleven, week-in and week-out. Almost all parents balance the work/play theory by bringing some school work along. The feed-back on the benefits of a family ski holiday is so enormous and obvious that we won’t elaborate here. But we wanted to add something!

 

National Curriculum Ski Workbook (Key Stage 2)

We’ve found a fantastic national curriculum based workbook which was created by an ex-teacher who used to encourage her own children to do something similar on their ski holidays. It’s jam-packed with lots of educational but fun, snow-themed ideas, based on Key Stage Two.

For the forthcoming season, all Snowbizz children will receive one of these ski workbooks to complete during their week. With the help of the pink ladies, even our 3 and 4 year olds in the Toton Ski School will have a beautiful written record to take back home.

And this is just the start! With the input of some very inspirational teachers and heads, we’ve got a lot more exciting plans for 2015.

 

Please help the Family Holiday Association

Sadly not all children are as lucky as ours.

The Family Holiday Association help disadvantaged families, genuine referrals from the NSPCC, Barnados and social workers. We all know just how much our own children take from a family holiday; for these poor kids a holiday can literally be life-changing.

For 2015, all Snowbizz children will be receiving these really fun workbooks to supplement their whole ski experience. If you’re already booked with another operator please don’t despair; for a small donation to the Family Holiday Association, who help disadvantaged kids have life-changing holiday experiences, these workbooks can be yours.

They’re really brilliant workbooks, suitable for any ski holiday, and we guarantee ski-fanatic mums and dads will love them as much as the kids.  So if you or any friends are not travelling with Snowbizz  and you would like copy, please make  a small donation to the Family Holiday Association via this Just Giving link, https://www.justgiving.com/teams/Snowbizz/  then forward your address to sarah@snowbizz.co.uk to pop your copies in the post.

 

Thank you for helping!

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