16/04/2021
Easter camp 2021 roundup
We’re so pleased to have come back stronger than ever this Easter! Things have been challenging recently and COVID-19 hit us hard but we’re back with a vengeance and have had a truly memorable Easter at Barracudas.
The numbers don’t lie
It’s been a bumper Easter at Barracudas! With 31 Easter camps, we’ve operated 60 weeks in total with 402 days and 3,618 hours of fun across our camps. Over 6,000 children and over 600 seasonal camp staff have been through our doors over the holidays which amounts to a whole heap of happiness and life long memories made.
Whilst there’s been way too much to mention, here are some highlights we’ve had this Easter:
New activities
Our timetable is all about promoting an active lifestyle. We offer a huge range of activities that will always be fun, varied and built on our ACTIVE motto: Athletic, Creative, Teamwork, Inspiring, Variety, Energetic!
We were delighted to add new activities this Easter, from The Cube, to Circus Skills. Kids really enjoyed these new sessions and the timing was great for our rebalancing Feel Good Yoga!
Not only that, but we also introduced new specialist football clubs at a number of our camps with Palace For Life Football Camp at Chislehurst and Hayes and West Ham United Foundation Football Camp at Chelmsford and Upminster. We’re looking forward to them returning to even more camps in the summer.
Theme Days
The end of the week is always fun with our Theme Days. This Easter was no exception with the children expressing themselves with Lookalike Laughs on 1st April, Colours of the Rainbow on 9th April and Celebrations From Around the Globe on 16th April.
Camp highlights
Farnham introduced the Barracudas Olympics on 14th April with each group representing a different country with points awarded throughout each day. On Wednesday Malta (Minnows) earned themselves 4 points by learning and performing an amazing dance, with Spain (our lovely Starfish) in the lead and Dominican Republic (Dolphins) a close second. The results are in and congratulations goes to Malta with 65 points! Well done to all the children for a great competition.
Our new activity ‘Among Us’ went down a storm at many of our camps, with the Dolphins group at Huntingdon even independently playing their own game during the break!
Kinball was a big hit with the Barracudas at High Wycombe. The older kids really enjoyed the session and played with gusto and grace! And basket ball went down a storm for Stingrays and Barracudas. With 8 hoops to chose from they had to see how many times they could score in a minute. These skills sessions were both energetic and competitive.
Easter at Barracudas Canterbury has been full of excitement and laughter across all our groups. The Minnows and Dolphins have had a super time hunting for Easter eggs and were delighted to find Billy Barracuda at the end! The Minnows and Dolphins also had an amazing time in the stunning Woodlands at the camp, exploring the signs of spring and testing what elements of the woodlands float. The Minnows had a super time at their hand-made puppet show in a theatre made out of cardboard by the Barracudas, thank you Barracudas! They also had a birthday party in Dolphins this week and all the children had a lovely time celebrating together! The Piranhas, Stingrays and Barracudas have been superior scientists using different liquids to make rocket fuels, balloon rockets and lava lamps. As well as challenging themselves in team building tasks. We have loved playing lots of different sports and catching our Red Shirts out in Dodgeball!
Feel Good Yoga was a big hit at our camps this Easter. Barracudas at Watford loved the new sessions and not only worked on their yoga poses and core strength but also developed skills to lead the session at times. We love to see the kids grow at camp. At High Wycombe Animal Yoga was enjoyed by the kids and staff in Starfish group. All the children were pretending to freeze in animal positions allowing some excellent stretching to occur. The favourite poses created were the frog and money pose. Jasmine had a fantastic snail pose. Starfish group at Wokingham enjoyed challenging themselves in tree pose, bow pose and cat pose. The children learned the phrase "Namaste" to finish their session feeling calm and centered.
The children at Chigwell camp had great fun with the Easter Billy Hunt. The Easter egg pictures were hidden around camp with clues as to where the next egg was. There were 24 eggs around camp and the Starfish, Minnows and Dolphins had a go at the hunt. At the end, they managed to find Billy, great teamwork Chigwell!
Woking camp had it all going on with Minnows and Starfish loving the Yoga, Stingrays and Swordfish immersing themselves in drama sessions and the Barracudas were super sporty. The younger groups also enjoyed the clay modelling and the older children loved our new activity, The Cube.
Children loved Sevenoaks camp this Easter, with Sammy from Barracudas writing"I like Barracudas because it has lots of activities and the staff are really nice." on our feedback tree displayed in the reception area. Also at the camp Dodgeball and Panic Pin have been hugely popular particularly when Senior Sports Instructor Jordan was involved. Jordan set up an exciting timetable for the children including a mixture of Dance, Drama, Sport and Art culminating in each group having a talent show on Friday.
Our Camp Manager at Streatham & Clapham said the camp was full of fun! Billy Barracuda enjoyed coming along to registration and children across all ages enjoyed making clay models. Minnows and Starfish loved playing 'find Billy' around the camp, whilst our older groups enjoyed 'The Apprentice', talking through their ideas for companies and products with our Bubble Leaders and Bubble Support. Another camp very much looking forward to summer.
Twickenham Waldegrave camp have gone all out to raise funds for our chosen charity, Great Ormond Street Hospital, with their 'Bushtucker Trial'. Kids have been voting all week and the 'top' 3 staff members have faced the dreaded trial. Evie and Scarlett were amazing, eating their way through maggots from a dead squirrel (rice and strawberry jam), dog poo from the field (cake with hot chocolate), earth worms (noodles with green dye) and beans and cockroaches (beans and tortilla chips). Sterling effort to the 2 runners up; Alice who lost it at the poo, and Charlie who lost it after the worms. Well done, Twickenham Waldegrave!
Contactless check in and app
As part of our COVID-19 Secure camps policy we introduced a new way for parents to check in and sign out their children. Instead of the system of passwords and security cards, parents are using QR codes for our staff to scan at registration.
This new approach is not only more efficient and secure, but has the added benefit of being totally paperless. Parents no longer need to print their completed Essential Information forms, which are needed for every child to be accepted on camp, this can all be done online.
For an even better experience, we have a new parent app too. This gives parents access to handy information such as booking details, directions to camp and a pre camp checklist. This has proved to be a great timesaver and has really helped our bookers be camp ready!
Parent feedback
We really got a buzz out of seeing all the smiling faces at camp. The icing on the cake is all the positive reviews we’ve had from our parents. With 52 5 star reviews and counting, we couldn’t be happier.
Andrew said of Chelmsford "Child had an excellent week at the football camp in the first week of half term. As a parent, this felt a cut above other camps we’ve used in terms of organisation, staffing and administration. Excellent and we’d be happy to use them again.A big thank you to everyone who took the time out to leave us a review this Easter!"
Erin left this review "Barracudas Huntingdon is always a crowd pleaser for our kids and this Easter break was no different. They love the activities and the staff are really experts in children, they really get what they want and need. They are very professional and I haven’t met a staff member I didn’t like. Varieties of activities are offered and the kids come home tired. It’s a welcoming environment for everyone as well, which I love."
And it was so lovely to hear this from Emma; "My daughter really enjoyed her week at Barracudas. She started out very apprehensive, but made friends and tried new activities. She came home full of joy and confidence. She’s been before and enjoyed it, but had lost confidence during lockdown, so this was a much needed opportunity.
You can read all of our Trustpilot reviews here.
We’ve certainly had an Easter of fun at Barracudas! We’d like to say a huge thank you to all the children, parents and camp staff for making it another season to remember. What a come back!
Get our highlights from our first week and second week of camp for even more of a glance behind the curtain!
We’re pleased as punch to be back and to have had such a lot of fun this Easter. We couldn’t have done it without our loyal customers, supportive host schools and suppliers and our dedicated camp staff. We give you our biggest thanks ever!
Here’s to an amazing summer. Places are available to book online now so take a look for your closest camp. We hope to see you there!