Lacey

London City Royals basketball team have a three week holiday club at Crystal Palace which caters for this age group. It?s not for the whole day (til 3pm I think) but our son will make own way there and back. https://londoncityroyals.com/2019/04/summer-camp-2019

There is also Bishop Thomas Grant which is co-ed and near Streatham

It does have a year 6 starting this year (when it opened it went up to year 2).

Deen city farm which is by Morden Hall does pony rides round a small area (?2 according to this link). It's a nice place (new play area for little ones) and walk to Morden Hall if you've not been. http://www.deencityfarm.co.uk/portfolio/things-to-do/

We searched for ages too. We found two sports based ones - Moving Matters at Elmgreen School in Tulse Hill and Dulwich Hamlet FC

There's a real disparity I think in the extent to which schools support working parents with wrap around care. Our closest school (in Lambeth) had no after school club on site and the breakfast club only starts at 8.30am (one of the reasons we didn't apply). At our boys' school, they are in breakfast club from 8am and ASC til 5.45pm and the school also runs a holiday club at Easter and in the Summer. The school's approach has been to expand the provision to meet growing demand in the years we have been at the school. Convex - if the school has a year long waiting list for ASC, could you (and other parents in the same boat) ask the school what plans they have to expand it to meet the demand that clearly exists (assuming there is the necessary space)?

We've lived in West Norwood for about 5 years and echo all of SLad's points. The transport links are actually v good as there are two stations bookending the High Street, giving access to Victoria, London Bridge and the Thameslink. On schools, I don't know about St Luke's, but Julians is very popular and well regarded - alongside the site on Wolfington Road mentioned above, it has a separate new build site on Leigham Court Road. Other schools that might be worth looking at, depending upon where your friends are looking to buy and the ages of their children, could be Hitherfield and Dunraven (Dunraven is now an all through school but the primary bit only goes up to about Year 2/3 at the moment).

This all sounds great - especially looking forward to a lovely swim. I assume you don't need to book for the swim?

My nearly 9 year old does badminton at Jags on a Tuesday evening (6pm). We've just started going but he seems to be enjoying it so far!

Lambeth did when we applied last year (ironically for a Southwark school...)

I've gone for sticker books in this situation before. The Usborne ones have been well received - easy to pack, lightweight and I'm sure they will do a London themed one.

The nail biting liquid didn't work for us either - our son simply became accustomed to it. We did contemplate buying a Thumbguard but it seemed a big outlay for something that might not work. He gave up naturally at around 5 without any huge stress as far as I can recall; he's now 8, and there are no obvious problems with his teeth as a result. Our 4 year old is a finger-sucker and that looks like it's going to be a lot harder to put an end to...

Brilliant! Well done to all the staff at Bessemer who do an amazing job. And well done to the children too; there are some really lovely comments about them in the report.

Dobble is a good game for a range of ages to play together (probably age 4 up).

I've just been away for 11 nights for work. We did FaceTime every day which made a huge difference. Tho I'm not sure the 3 year old really noticed I'd gone.

We've been a few times this year (got an annual membership on a deal so trying to get value for our money!) Our boys (7 and 3) love the Duplo splash and play area. Definitely need swim stuff for this. We tend to do it at the end of the day so not then carting around wet stuff. Agree to take food and snacks tho children do eat for free in some of the restaurants after 3pm (which means they are quite busy then). Also, check out the info re parent swap if you have a younger child who can't go on all the rides.

We've used Jam holiday club in the past (on Red Post Hill). I've not received an email from them yet but it's usually on over Easter (you can contact them via the website). It's 9-6 which is great, and a bit of a change for our son from the usual sports based clubs.

I don't know about Southwark but some schools (non-Community schools?) may still have safest walking distance rather than crow flies/straight line eg in Lambeth, Julians is based on safest walking distance. But the Starting Schools booklet will make clear each school's criteria. Edited to add: most non-Community schools probably do have crow flies criteria but there may be some that still use safest walking distance.

Another option is to look at nurseries near where you work. We did this with our first child as we couldn't get a place locally despite going on waiting lists whilst pregnant. There are obvious downsides to this - commuting with a young child the main one! Though that was generally not too bad. And we never had to worry about being late for nursery.... You may find the waiting lists are shorter too. We only moved our son to a local nursery when I was pregnant with our second child so we survived the commute for 3 years.....

Just to update on this - school tours at Bessemer Grange are every Tuesday morning at 9.30am for the rest of the Autumn term.

According to their website, they are planning to reopen in time for October half term but in the meantime have a stall at the Sunday market in HH and are holding an Oliver Jeffers event in Gerty's Gumballs next Monday.

I'm with Vik. Our son enjoyed going into school to meet the teacher and we were able to ask all the same questions we would have been able to ask if they had come to our home.

At Bessemer they are the last Tuesday of every month at 9.30 - no need to book, just turn up. The school website says they will be more frequent in the Autumn term so, if you are interested in going on a tour, I would call the school when they re-open (after 5 Sept) and I'll try to remember to update here when the additional dates are available.

There is a school in Brixton called The Family School at Larkhall which has a similar sounding ethos - I only know about it because it's planning on moving to a new site near where I live where most of the learning will apparently also be outdoors. It applied for free school status but was unsuccessful so I imagine there would be hurdles in the way of any such application (though I confess I don't know much more than that).

I saw a tweet yesterday from brockwell park community partners which linked to their website - not sure how to do a link but it said there was a burst pipe and I think it was supposed to reopen today. Suggest you have a look at that, don't want to get anyone's hopes up!