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Over the next few weeks, millions of kids around the country will come home from school, toss their backpacks in a corner, and begin an annual ritual that can be fun, relaxing, stressful, and confusing all at the same time.

I speak, of course, of spring break — a phrase that has historically meant one thing to beach-bound college students, and quite another to families of younger kids, facing down a week (or sometimes two) when schools are closed and work is decidedly not.

Summer has its own challenges, for kids and adults alike. But spring break, like the countless other interruptions that pockmark school calendars, can be even harder to plan for. Fewer camps are open; summer school is months away. Some families go skiing or take a cruise, but amid rising prices, those options are out of reach for more and more parents.

For many families, “you kind of cobble it together on your own,” Lauren Smith Brody, CEO of the Fifth Trimester, a workplace gender equality consultancy, told me — which means a lot of stress for parents and, often, a lot of screen time for kids.

It’s not just an inconvenience — days off of school can mean days of hunger for kids from food-insecure families, who rely on school breakfast and lunch to get through the week. And the spike in juvenile crime between the hours of 3 and 6 pm on weekdays suggests that for some kids, unsupervised time can be dangerous.

Some school districts and afterschool programs offer free or low-cost spring break camps — a way to “reinforce some of the learning that’s going on in a way that feels like the........

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