My older kid is on the first year, he's 7 years old, so he's already on vacation. Yes, from June to September there is no school, so we need to pay for programs to keep them or find free ones if we are lucky. I found one of those supported by the city services, he will go 2 weeks to the beach and other visits, food and beach clothes included, I was really surprised, I thought that these sort of things didn't existed. You aware of any free (or at least cheap) programs as well?
I took my daughters to Vacation Bible School this year. It is really a lot of fun. It was only a week long but they had so much fun. Even I had fun. Parents got to see the 'tail end' of it by arriving 30 minutes early. I was even dancing to the music with the kids. I will definitely be doing this every year for them. Best thing of all, it was completely free and they even got their own VBS shirts to keep.
My kid was there for 2 weeks and it all went well up to the last day where in the farewell party he lost his bag with his clothes. It was just too many people there, I didn't check inside his bag (all bags were alike) and we brought a bag from someone else by mistake. Luckily one week later we discovered it after speaking to a lot of people, so not all was lost, only our concern for one week.