Now that school's out, you may be thinking that distractions galore and other interruptions will make it impossible for you to work on your home based business errands.

Well, not really if you're creative enough or if there are some diversions that your kid can get busy with while you're typing that long overdue article you've been trying hard to finish.

Check out what viable option one home based worker is using to tame working-at-home-with-kids troubles during summer:

The Johnsons are just one of the many families who deal with the struggles and craziness of summer. They know it's not all fun in the sun, as moms and dads around the Roanoke Valley balance jobs against keeping their children occupied after school lets out.

For Johnson, that required a decision: Work at home and free up time to take care of her children, or juggle her mom duties, constantly leaving the office for pickups and drop-offs.

For others without the luxury of working from home, ensuring children's safety and keeping their minds from becoming dormant can be an even bigger challenge.

One way to do that is camps, camps and more camps. The Roanoke Valley offers plenty.

Each summer, Rising Star Sports and Adventure Camp in southern Roanoke County has hires new staff and prepares its 20,000-square-foot indoor arena for sweaty kids, said Robert Polluck, whose son owns the camp.

"Ninety-nine point five percent of them just drop their kids off and leave," Polluck said.

The camp opens at 7 a.m. to allow parents enough time to get to work.

Some of the families are regulars, he added, and some come sporadically.

If sports camps don't suit your fancy, there is always art and science.

Many child-friendly institutions around the Roanoke Valley, such as Mill Mountain Zoo, offer weeklong learning and adventure camps.

The Science Museum of Western Virginia has dissection camps for older children, and Amazing Animals, where younger children interact with live animals.

"We just do those things that we love and hope to convey that love of science to the children," said Nancy McCrickard, executive director of the museum.

The museum still has some camps open, which run during the day for a week each.

Camp costs run the gamut. You can find them for free, in cases of some school-sponsored groups, or you can spend an arm and a leg.

A typical day camp might run somewhere between $100 and $200 a week.

Honeytree Early Learning Centers in Roanoke, for example, has a weeklong summer camp for $125. An additional activity fee of $75 allows children to travel to recreation centers and pools. The day care center has more than 450 summer campers, plenty who are dropped off by busy parents.