Forest School Holiday Club - Cold Harbour

What’s the Magic of Forest School?

Located at our outdoor learning site at Cold Harbour, West Bletchley, our holiday club offers fun, active childcare for children aged 3-11 during the school holidays, delivered by our team of experienced forest school leaders and outdoor practitioners.

The ethos of our Forest School holiday club is that we remain child-led as much as possible so a large part of our sessions are just allowing children the space and freedom to play in the great outdoors however they want; to be swinging on our swings, mini beast hunting, mixing up potions in our mud kitchen or just relaxing in hammocks.

No two sessions are the same, whether is fire lighting, woodwork, forest craft or campfire cooking, there is always something fun and engaging for children to participate in.

Our holiday club aims to provide children with an environment in which they are free to be themselves, meet new friends and socialise whilst engaging in fun forest school activities. We aim to be as inclusive as possible and strive to provide all children with the right to engage in a session that promotes success and happiness through exploration and play.

And don’t forget…wellies are essential!

Activities Include:

• Building and lighting fires
• Cooking on a campfire
• Den building
• Natural Arts and crafts
• Mini-beast hunting and nature tracking
• Tool use
• Scavenger hunts
• Pond dipping
• Outdoor group games
• Mud Kitchen

The children need to bring their own pack lunch and snacks for throughout the day, however, a hot snack (such as crumpets, vegetarian chilli with nachos, vegetable kebabs, s'mores, cheese fondue, damper bread, muffins, pizza wraps, cheese toasties and soup) along with hot chocolate is provided as part of a lovely activity where children can gather around the campfire to help cook their own snack in the company of the other children and our forest school leaders. 

Please ensure that your child is suitably dressed for the session, we suggest long sleeve and trousers and sensible shoes such as old trainers, walking boots or wellies, depending on the weather. Please no open toe shoes.

Other things to pack

• Lots of layers as, it can get very cold. This should include socks, jumper, & waterproofs if you have them
• If it is a sunny place please provide suncream and a sun hat. If needed our staff can help reapply sun cream.
• Spare clothes
• A filled water bottle - although these can be refilled during the day please supply a larger bottle. If you also want to pack cartons or juice that is no problem.
• A morning snack and a packed lunch (you are more than welcome to pack more snacks than just 2 as they will be welcome to them whenever they are hungry). Please note, our holiday club is nut and Sesame Seed free, so please do not pack anything that contains nuts or sesame seed
• A cup suitable for hot chocolate - camping enamel cups or thick plastic cups (such as those from Ikea) are ideal

Meet our Senior Outdoor Practitioner 

Helen

Helen has worked for Acorn for 5 years and has always shown a keen interest in the Outdoors. She became Senior Outdoor Practitioner in April 2024, leading our Nature Kindergarten and Holiday Club at Cold Harbour. Helen has a wealth of experience with a wide variety of age groups, is Level 3 qualified in Childcare, and is working towards her Forest School qualification. 

Helen’s favourite activities are, helping the children to use the bow saw and hand drill to create lots of wooden creations, and making lots of exciting snacks and hot chocolate on the fire during her Nature Kindergarten sessions, which the children enjoy around our fire circle. Helen has a passion for outdoor learning and thrives in being able to encourage and support the children to learn all about the natural world.

Cold harbour Ofsted