What an epic Activ Camps summer!
Over the holidays we welcomed over 4,000 children at nine non-stop fun holiday camps in London, delivering just shy of 20,000 days of childcare to our local community.
Our camps were filled with laughter, friendship, fun and adventure, with a huge array of epic activities on offer. Throughout the summer holidays and through our Parent & Carer Survey, we’ve received such incredible and overwhelmingly positive feedback, some of which you can read about in our recent blog.
However, we are always looking to improve and to perfect our holiday camps, so also asked for your honest and constructive feedback, recognising how invaluable your insights are.
We wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts and we want you to know that we’ve heard you. Please read below for areas that we will be focusing on developing and for more information why some things are as they are. This blog will shed light on the following:
- Drop off & collection: Striking the right balance
- Daily highlights: Keeping you in the loop
- “I’m too old for this”: Activities for those that are growing up too quick
- Super Swim Sessions: Delivering safe sessions as often as possible
- October half term – Join the fun!
Drop off & collection: Striking the right balance
We understand that drop-off and collection require a careful balance between efficiency for you, the parents and carers, and the safety of the children.
We recognise the need for speed at drop off and collection, allowing everyone to get on and tackle those relentlessly busy days. However, to ensure the safety of your children and to uphold the requirements set out by OFSTED, we must ensure that due care and attention is taken at these times.
This will inevitably result in a queue, especially when we take into consideration the likelihood of some little ones being worried about saying goodbye in the morning or the time it takes to walk those little, tired legs to the sign out area after a long day of amazing activities!
During sign in, our team is committed to welcoming all children warmly, helping them to immediately settle into their new environment whilst ensuring that all necessary details are recorded on our registers. We will also ensure that all medication is collected and safely stored, with each child then escorted to their designated area, where they will engage in group games with our staff before the fun really starts.
During collection, we prioritise safety and communication. Our staff actively communicate as much as possible with parents arriving to collect their children, providing updates as needed. Children are safely escorted to their parents and carers, but only after our team checks IDs to confirm the identity of the adult collecting each child, ensuring a secure handover. This thorough process gives everyone peace of mind, knowing that each child is safely returned to the right guardian.
This year, taking into account your feedback, we have introduced additional sign-in stations to streamline the process and will continue to do so to ensure the optimal balance between speed and efficiency.
Daily highlights: Keeping you in the loop
We understand how important it is for you to actually see and understand what your child gets up to during their time with Activ Camps and that often your happily exhausted children don’t give too much away about what they actually did – no matter how fun it all was!
This summer, on our Facebook and Instagram pages we featured daily stories showcasing some of the best moments and activities. This upcoming holiday, we will be redoubling our efforts by not only sharing photos and videos daily but also an example timetable for what’s happening across our camps that day.
Whether you spot your child’s happy face beaming back at you or just get a sneak peak of the incredible activities and facilities available, we highly encourage you to drop us a follow so you can stay in the loop!
Additionally, we will also be aiming to share more information in advance of each holiday camp, offering sneak peeks of the action, including activity details and full timetables, so you can get you children excited for what’s to come.
For our early years children (ages 4-5), we recognise that they may not always be the best at communicating how their day went. However, we’ve received excellent feedback on our early years slips and will be redesigning these to provide a clearer picture of their day at camp, as well as increasing the frequency of these updates.
We’re committed to making your child’s experience memorable and we want you to feel just as engaged in their journey at camp!
“I’m too old for this”: Activities for those that are growing up too quick
Children are often desperate to grow up as fast as possible and love being given extra opportunities to challenge themselves and to take on extra responsibilities. This is something that we always aim to do at Activ Camps, with specific activities for the 8 + combined with delivering a fantastic range of competitive activities.
However, we recognise that we need to do more, adding new activities and running them more frequently to keep it fresh and exciting for those older children, especially those that have been coming to Activ Camps year after year!
Our Rookie Programme harnesses the independent energy of 10-14-year-olds by allowing them to occasionally support younger groups, helping them develop valuable leadership and communication skills. We also channel their energy into activities like swimming, where children aged 8 and older, with more pool experience, enjoy greater freedom outside the structured approach of our younger swimmers.
We’re, therefore, excited to announce that we will be revamping our offerings for the older children on camp, including some truly high-octane, grown up kids only, activities!
To start with, we’ll see more of Archery Tag and Body Zorbs on the timetables, perfect for adventurous kids looking to push their limits and enjoy some adrenaline. Additionally, 2025 will see the introduction of a series of new activities to suit those older and more adventurous children. We’re in the research phase currently, so any ideas please let us know!
There will also continue to be a strong emphasis on sports-based activities like tennis, basketball, and rugby, fostering fantastic development of sports-specific skills in an inclusive environment.
We’re also going to focus on expanding access to our Rookie Programme, actively promoting this opportunity and allowing children to more easily participate. This initiative provides the older children a greater level of choice, some more freedom and some responsibility during their camp experience.
Super Swim Sessions: Delivering safe sessions as often as possible
We entirely agree that swimming is an amazing activity and how special it is that children can participate in this activity as part of their Activ Camps experience. We also recognise how important it is to prioritise safety above all else.
This year we’ve been working with the Royal Life Saving Society (RLSS), the UK’s leading authority on swim teaching and water safety, to deliver structured swim sessions that help develop water confidence, swim strength and safety in the water. We’ve received great feedback from many of you about the introduction of these sessions, and lots of positive feedback about how amazing the instructors are for the children.
For some of our stronger swimmers, yes, they would love to do their own thing all session long but to remain compliant with current legislation this simply isn’t possible. Instead we focus on fun challenges and mini games throughout, with things like diving competitions and jump-catch at the end of the session.
We also work extremely hard to maximise the number of children swimming during our allocated slot in the swimming pool each day. For example this summer at Emanuel School, with three Lifeguards, two Swim Teachers and multiple Activity Instructors in the water, roughly 100 children enjoyed swimming as part of their daily activity – resulting in roughly 3,500 individual sessions of swimming delivered over the summer.
However, there are limitations in play and we will never risk the safety of the children by attempting to have too many children in the pool.
There’s also the very real logistical challenges attached to getting, for example, 16 four year olds changed – as we’re sure that you’ll know! Chasing lost socks, mismatched clothing, underwear dropped in a puddle, t-shirts back to front and shoes on the wrong way around!
However, we love being able to provide this amazing activity, with all the enjoyment and benefits that this activity brings to children attending our camps.
October half term: Join the fun!
We can’t wait to welcome many of you back to camp this half term! From October 21st to November 1st, we’ll be offering exciting activities like Archery Tag and Body Zorbs, along with a whole host of non-stop fun.
There’s great reasons to join the fun…
- Over 60 non-stop fun activities: With GIANT inflatable assault courses and mega slides, team sports, dodgeball, swimming sessions, and more, Activ Camps is a one-stop shop for adventure!
- Amazing venues and facilities: Our Ofsted-registered venues offer extensive sports facilities, providing a safe, inclusive, active, and fun environment at all times.
- Fully trained, fun-loving staff: With staff ratios up to 1:8, our fully trained and DBS-checked team ensures your child enjoys exciting and varied sessions daily. It’s a perfect environment to bring and make new friends!
- Convenient hours: Our standard hours are 08:30 – 16:30 with FREE pick-up until 17:00. We also offer extended care until 18:00 to fit your schedule.
- Great savings: Use your childcare vouchers and tax-free childcare to save big, plus enjoy up to £45.00 off when you join us for a full week!
Where to find us:
- Balham- La Retraite School – 28th October – 1st November
- Barnes – St Paul’s School – 28th October – 1st November
- Battersea & Wandsworth – Emanuel School – 21st October – 1st November
- Earlsfield – Burntwood School – 28th October – 1st November
- Tooting – Graveney School – 28th October – 1st November
- Wimbledon – Wimbledon College – 28th October – 1st November
Prices start from £41.00 a day and you can save up to £45.00 when you book a full week of camp!
For more information head to our Half Term Holiday Camps page and secure your places for an unforgettable half term!