Useful information
Here we share several types of useful information. Some information may overlap with what is available at the Welcome center of University of Geneva and the UNIGE parents guide, who provide various helpful information.
Any feedback is welcome to improve the contents! Please share your secret of success with us!
A particularly useful website is here: https://www.loisirsjeunes.ch/geneve/
It is a great database for daily and vacation activities. It has a nice search function that you can filter various activities depending on your preference.
- Wednesdays!
Let's be honest. Wednesdays can be very tough for parents once children start their school at 4 years old. Most schools are off on Wednesdays. In the Swiss public schools, children go to school in the morning after they are at the class of "5P" (8-9 years old). What are we going to do with children on Wednesday???
1. One of parents stays at home with children
This is of course an option. If you are happy with this option, then no more information needed.
2. Various activities
There are a lot of different type of activities offered on Wednesday. Music, dance, sports, arts... Typically, these activities are 1-2 hours. What does that mean? One of parents has to drop children at one place, pick them up, and then drop at another activity, pick them up etc... It gets trickier and trickier as the number of children increases and each one wants to do different things...One of the parents or both parents will not able to work on daytime on Wednesday. (hiring a nanny can be a solution for some people)
3. A place children can stay for a whole day (including lunch) or a half day
If such a place exists and if children are well taken care with different activities for a whole (half) day, that would be a dream as parents can work for a whole day or at least half day on Wednesdays. Does this exist? Not many, but yes!
- Le Chalet du petit prince (https://www.lechaletdupetitprince.ch/)
This is a very nice association where children can choose one activity in the morning and one in the afternoon (wood works, cooking, gardening etc.). Children can stay there on Wednesdays as long as from 8:30 am till 6pm if you wish. You have to watch out for when they open for the registration, because it is popular and competitive. The spots may be gone quickly.
- Maisons de quartier et centres de loisirs (https://www.geneve.ch/fr/public/jeunes/culture-sports-loisirs/maisons-quartier-centres-loisirs)
There are 17 locations of maisons de quartier. Children can stay there for a whole day or half day there, although there is no activity such as Le Chalet du petit prince offers. Still, it is a great option that we don't need to keep transfering children from one activity to another.
- School holidays!
In fact, there are so many holidays for children all year long! Yay! Wait a minute, they have much more than the vacations we can take...oops. What do we do?
1. Send them to our parents
If you have parents who are willing to take care of them for a week or two, you are super lucky!
2. Various activities
During the vacation period, there will be various weekly activities opening in the city. Attention: You have to plan this many months in advance. Every week, you can decide which activity children want to do from the available options. Then during that week, you can normally drop children in the morning and pick them up in the evening. So, you can work normally. During the vacation periods, we often don't have to worry about Wednesdays! Children can stay at the activities for the entire week including Wednesday!
- Caritas-Jeunesse (https://caritas-jeunesse.ch/)
They offer a variety of activities during school vacations. Animators are really nice and many of them are also students at Unige (Section des sciences de l'éducation). You can subscribe to their newsletters so that you won't miss the opening of their inscriptions for activities.
- MJSR (https://mjsr.ch/)
They offer a variety of activities during school vacations. They used to work with us as animators for "mercredi à l'uni" and "vacances à l'uni".
- Le Chalet du petit prince (https://www.lechaletdupetitprince.ch/)
- Maisons de quartier et centres de loisirs (https://www.geneve.ch/fr/public/jeunes/culture-sports-loisirs/maisons-quartier-centres-loisirs)
- Others
- Pour l'accueil et la garde des plus petits: Espace de Vie Enfantine du secteur universitaire
- Pour les plus grands: Le Scienscope porte d'entrée des sciences de l'UNIGE
- Pour les encore plus grands: Programme Athéna, Club de math