Skills and thrills encourages activities while at home

Most working parents rely on daycare, holiday camps, grandparents, babysitters and other solutions to keep the kids occupied during the school holidays. The current social distancing rules mean many of these aren’t an option - leaving parents with the challenge of working at home while the kids are running around.

This could be the new normal for the next few months, so parents need to ensure kids have different activities available to keep them busy. Online camps via Skills and Thrills make sure that kids aren’t stuck in front of the telly or playing video games all day. Unlike traditional e-learning offerings, which often requires the users to be self-directed, the programs are live streamed with tutors who run each workshop and interact via video and online chat with the kids at home.

Skills and Thrills Corporate Care helps enterprises and their staff by providing fully vetted, on site kids’ holiday programs with a variety of top tier providers. Skills and Thrills has a growing customer base across a range of industries including in property, banking and finance, universities, consultancies and technology companies. Skills and Thrills manages the risk, does all the administrative work and provides an end-to-end service.                                                                                                  

Given the current COVID-19 environment, the business has moved to completely online delivery, so is working with corporate clients to create bespoke online care programs that staff/parents can access to keep the kids engaged while they work from home, including full-day online programs that include fun but educational morning classes, active afternoon fitness sessions and even mindfulness workshops.

Activities are all skills-based and engaging, for example they have a Kitchen Chemistry workshop, where kids follow along to make lava lamps and bubbling volcanoes using ingredients found at home. There are a range of classes from science to coding, to fitness, for kids aged from 5-12 years old.

Skillsandthrills.com.au is an online hub, providing a central place where parents and carers can instantly find, book and pay for engaging kids’ programs and experiences. While working together at Macquarie, Shazia Juma-Ross (ex Global COO Macquarie Capital) and Michael Hunter (Venture Capital) were both frustrated at the amount of time it took to find fun and engaging school holiday activities for their children.

With time already poor from demanding corporate roles, and the need to find options for their kids for 12 weeks of the year, they knew they could do this better, so they joined forces and Skills and Thrills was born. Whether your kids like art or science, dance or coding, are 5 or 12 years old, Skills and Thrills takes the hassle out of spending hours searching, vetting and co-ordinating with other parents.