I wonder how many parents and carers there are that are desperate to get their child’s name down for a Forest School holiday club this year? To have some time to yourself, to avoid taping your children to the wall as Dariusz said in his blog comment 😉 , to get back to work or arguably more importantly that your child needs to play through learning outside with children similar in age and is dead keen to go ‘play out’ again?
This is the question Siobhan (TreeTops Forest School) and I have been asking ourselves over the last couple of weeks. We are hoping the demand is there and to check this we are going to open some booking dates next Friday 12th June. We thought that as families will not be travelling abroad this summer and children have been at home-school that the opportunity may well be popular. We plan to use Arkendale, Knaresborough and Bishop Wood, Cawood sites.
The plan is that next Friday I will open booking for these sites for the first six weeks of the holiday club. Can you believe it is actually a seven week holiday this year? Currently, The Forestry Commission England has closed Bishop Wood to all third parties, like us, in order to stay within Government guidelines. However, we are in close contact with them and are hoping that by August (which is when the holiday club will be on at Bishop Wood the restriction will be lifted. Do not fear though, if this is not the case we have a plan B and an alternative wood in Hambleton which is only five minutes away from Bishop Wood. It is likely that the Arkendale, Knaresborough site may well be the first to hold holiday clubs.
As with school, Forest School will run slightly differently in terms of numbers and groups. As an outline plan to minimise the risk of transmission of the virus; each week there will be a new hub of twenty children on a first come first served basis (whoever books on the online booking system first) The hubs are so that the children are in contact with the same group all week. Out of that twenty we will offer places to a maximum of fifteen children. We are going to have to be strict about this maximum number of children and have decided to open the booking next Friday for our email subscribers only and then open it up on social media and schools the following week, just in case there is a land slide rush! This means that those who have subscribed to updates will get the first chance to book the dates and the site they prefer. The other good news is that you will not need to pay anything at this point. The two reasons for this are; that if there isn’t at least 14 children booked on then we will not be running the session and secondly, it would be super helpful for us to gauge demand before we confirm which dates will be going ahead. This is so that we can offer what the majority of people want. The bad news is that you will have to pay before the session but I think you will have guessed that anyway! There is lots to prepare and think about from what happens if you need the toilet to the age range of children but I will keep you all up to date with our progress in these weekly blogs. If you have friends with children who you think would benefit from our updates then they can subscribe on the home page. I hope you are all keeping well and the first week back hasn’t been too stressful? Next week I will be thinking about how we are making Forest School Corona Virus safe. Best wishes to all, Sally
