Come and join us at our amazing Forest school holiday club
School holidays begin, and here at Keepers Gate Forest school we open our gates to welcome children and offer adventure and fun. It really is the ultimate holiday club experience for children aged 4 – 11 years old in the local area.
Our ethos is to encourage children to explore and be at one with nature, spend uninterrupted time outdoors, immersed in the natural world. What better place could there be than here at forest school, in 30 acres of beautiful woodland and fields, looking out over the sea!
The holiday club remains child-led. Yes, we have a routine of sitting round the fire, drinking hot chocolate and eating marsh mellows, which everyone loves, and then we all go into the woodland to explore. This is where the children come alive, climbing trees, playing hide and seek, building dens, navigating new pathways, making new friends and looking after each other. We may then venture into the field, play games, sing songs, do cart wheels, chase each other, look for mini beasts, or just lie in the grass looking up at the sky. If the wind blows, we may get the kite out!
It must be lunch time! So, we venture back to the barn, still buzzing from their adventures and very hungry.
After lunch we always have a few activity ideas for the children if they want to join in. Whittling, painting, making creations, learning new skills using tools like hammers, drills, and saws. Making pop-corn on the fire always brings lots of laughter as the corns pop in the pan!
The dens get re-built every holiday as the children bring new ideas with them.
They may just want to play freely, making up their own games and activities. We’ve had treasure hunts, new obstacle courses built to challenge their skills. Finding ways to cross the grass without touching the ground, as a team they used planks of wood and tyres and if anyone fell in, they were in the lava!
The new mud kitchen was a huge hit in May half term with all the children making lots of mud pies. You are never too old to play in a mud kitchen!
Of course, the mud slide is loved by everyone!
Tree climbing builds confidence and self-esteem as children persevere and push themselves to conquer things they never thought they could do.
At the end of the day, parents pull in to the car park, greeted by very happy, smiling children that can’t wait to return!
Please see 'Key Information' page for prices and times.
Parent comments;
I wanted to message to say such a huge thank you to you and your team for your care of my two children who visited you over the last two days. I can’t explain to you the feeling I felt when I returned home from work to both of them bursting with excitement, describing everything they had done with you and the new friends they had made!! They struggled to get their words out quick enough, explaining all of the activities they had done and teaching me things that they had learnt! Also showing me all of their treasures! Harry taught me about the fungus that he had found and is desperate to light a fire with it!
To find a holiday club that is so well suited to both ages/interests is such a relief and the fact that they loved it so so much is obviously such a bonus! I asked Harry to score it out of 10 and his answer was 1000000!!!
Again, a huge thank you for providing a club that is so interesting and challenging, they can’t wait to come back!
