Hello all,

Looks like we may well be off to Les Arcs 2000 next year (2012) and the childcare being offered/recommended is at the Garderie. Whilst it’d be great if anyone could give their opinion of the this particular facility a more pertinent question should be ‘which type of class, in your collective experience, should we pick?’
We’ll have two 4yo girls with us, one is extremely adventurous and strong the other a bit more timid and not so strong.
Obviously we have little concern about the how the stronger child will cope with the combined class, but we are not sure whether we’d be pushing the second one in too early? Our intent was to put them into the same class, so at least they’d know someone else.
Have any of you used the ‘ski and playgroup’ option before, if so how compassionate are the staff to the various needs of the individual children? How physical is this type of class?
I wouldn’t expect any you to make up our minds for us, as you don’t know the girls in question, but are there any traits or physical abilities the kids should display to indicate they’re ready to wander around with planks on their feet, i.e. walk so far?

Many thanks in advance,

Billy

Hi billy, we went arc 2000 2 years ago with our 3 kids who were 5 3 and 2. And were in the same predicament. In the end we booked a nanny as the 2 year old couldn’t ski. I popped in to have a look at the guarderie an d it looked ok, but there were no other English children there the week we went and my wife said she was glad we didn’t go down that route . What I have learnt from starting my kids kids skiing at 3 ,3 & 5 is that it’s so much easier when they are 5 (although my dare devil 3 year old was skiing quite well after a week). If your budget allows a nanny worked brilliantly it allowed us to ski. Collect the kids from ski school when we wanted or carry on skiing if we didn’t. Most of the accommodation at 2000 is very near the slopes so we would often ask the nanny to bring the kids out later in the afternoon after they had a few hours rest, to ski with us . The other thing is the French don’t put up with the tears and tantrums as much as us Brits So the ski school drop off was sometimes quite tough for my wife. If you want to know anything else let me know. Have fun