Easter Holidays Programme

Over 2022’s Easter Holiday break, we worked with a large primary school in Essex to provide a four-day programme of activities that would allow students to develop new skills and knowledge as well as consolidate existing ones, as well as access to new experiences. 

A large part of this programme was based around nutritional education. Building an awareness and knowledge of healthy eating from a young age is the absolute best way to ensure healthy habits that last a lifetime, and we did so by employing a four-part approach. To begin, children were taught about balanced diets and their benefits on our wellbeing. Next, we looked at the cost of food and how to cook on a budget, before investigating where food comes from — learning about food mileage and its effects on climate change, the differences between fresh and frozen food, and the joys of growing food at home. Finally, we got hands-on: children helped catering staff in prepping fruit and veg they would eat at the celebration event that closed the programme. 

We also wanted to give children an opportunity to try things they may not have come across before. Using our network of qualified, experienced, brilliant facilitators, we offered activities that included singing lessons delivered by a qualified voice coach, and a media class where children could get hands on with a professional camera to record short stop motion videos using mouldable clay. There was also a printing workshop, and fun practical lessons on money management where children would role-play as shoppers and shopkeepers. 

Unsurprisingly, the primary school aged children we worked with were incredibly energetic and enthusiastic. We wanted to meet their need for physical activity using a number of creative ways, as well as giving them agency in choosing what they wanted to do. At the end of each day, we asked the children what sport they wanted to play the next day, and organised the sessions based on what they told us. Of course, organised sports aren’t for everyone, so we made sure to include alternative options for activities that would allow those who didn’t want to take part in the larger sessions to get active in a more relaxed way. On the final day, we brought along an inflatable nerf gun range, an 18-foot inflatable football dartboard, and an inflatable disco dome. As you can imagine, this went down brilliantly. It was a fantastic way to finish the programme and allowed the children to celebrate their time together.