22/08/2022
Summer camp fun at Barracudas!
The summer is just whizzing by! We can't believe we're almost at the end of our #summeroffun.
We wanted to share some of our stand out moments from our 5th week of the season. Take 5 to see what we got up to.
Inter-camp competition
We love a bit of healthy competition at Barracudas. Throughout the summer we have been running our inter-camp competition. Camps gained points by winning our photo of the day or session of the day, as well as showing our followers what they were getting up to in social media takeovers.
This is a fun way to add a sprinkling of magic to all our camps. It helps our staff to always remain on top form and provides additional motivation to deliver such amazing experiences that children can’t wait to come back! We’re all about the fun and we’ve been delighted with all the moments we’ve shared so far this summer.
As many of our camps closed on Friday, we closed the competition and totted up the scores.
Congratulations to one of our newest camps, Salisbury, for becoming our overall winner of the summer! Their ‘best Barracudas chant’ elevated them to the top of our leader board last week.
A massive well done to Bishop’s Stortford and Godalming too, who are our runners up for summer 2022. We’ve loved seeing all our camps get involved with huge enthusiasm this year. The atmosphere at camp has been fantastic and whilst we know grown ups can’t join us at camp, we hope you’ve enjoyed our camp insights on social media.
Of course, we're proud of ALL our camps and know each and every one has delivered fantastic summer holiday experiences and created life long memories for each child at camp.
Staff member of the week
Lily, a shining activity leader at Croydon, won our overall staff member of the week! Here’s what Croydon had to say about her:
"Lily is an absolute ray of sunshine around camp. She's exceptionally creative in her activities with children, and they love her for it. Multiple staff members nominated her for SMOTW. The only problem with Lily is her story-reading; it's so entrancing that we find ourselves wandering into the base room to listen along! Lily has been an absolutely stellar addition to the Barracudas team this year. We're so proud of her, and the results she got back on Thursday!"
Well done, Lily!
Ukrainian funded places
We're delighted to be working with Mail Force to offer fully funded places at our activity camps this summer. Mail Force is a fantastic charity, set up to offer support for Ukrainian children who have arrived in the UK.
We were quick to embrace this scheme and do what we can to help these vulnerable children. With 650 places in total throughout our 45 camps. Each child is able to join us for 2 full weeks in the holidays.
We employed 2 Ukrainian speaking members of staff in our head office, so we can better support Ukrainian children and parents. With the help of our Ukrainian colleagues, we've translated key documents to help parents through their booking and to understand more about our camps. We’ve also created some key translation guides to help children at camp.
Children have benefited from taking part in our unrivalled range of activities, trying new things and developing key skills during the summer holiday at Barracudas. They've also had a vital opportunity to practice their English and socialise with other children. All these things will really help children to settle into the UK this summer and we’re so pleased we are a part of this amazing scheme.
We've loved being a part of this and having an opportunity to help. We've also been recognised by local news outlets. Just see what they're saying:
Surrey Live Facebook Live interview at Farnham camp
Local news article about fully funded places for Ukrainian children at Barracudas Huntingdon
Local news article about fully places for Ukrainian children at Barracudas Winchester
We love this photo of staff and children at Bishop's Stortford representing the Ukrainian flag in honour of our Ukrainian children at camp!
Photo of the day
We’ve loved seeing what children are getting up to camp so far! Each day we choose our favourite photo taken at our clubs. Monday the Barracudas group at Woodford celebrated Raksha Bandhan by making friendship bracelets, at Salisbury camp on Tuesday kids loved the woodland trail and we love this arts and crafts photo from Farnahm camp on Wednesday. Twickenham Waldegrave got our vote on Thursday with fun motor sports session (showcasing our fantastic new electric vehicles!) and we ended the week with this great sports day image from Romford camp.
Session of the day
Kids get the chance to take part in an unrivalled number of activities at Barracudas. With 6 sessions each day, and a choice for every one, there’s almost too many favourite moments to pick from. Here are our favourite sessions of the week. We loved the outdoor activities at Cambridge St Faith’s camp on Monday. We loved what was going on in explore and play at Hemel Hempstead on Tuesday and the Minnows created a magical fish in an arts and crafts session at Hertford camp on Wednesday. The Minnows stole the show at Woodford on Thursday too, just look at those sunflowers! We loved the sneak peak of the Norwich City CSF football course at Cambridge Long Road on Friday. Phew! That’s a lot of fun across our camps, think we need a lie down!
Getting social!
We love sharing our moments with you on social media. There's no better way to see what we're up to with our camp takeovers.
TikTok
You're loving our TikTok's and we're pleased to now have over 4.5k thousand followers! People have loved seeing Billy Barracuda being chased by the children and the Barracudas kids showing us around Salisbury camp. Billy's antics at Romford camp was super popular and so was the sports day on Friday at Bishop's Stortford camp.
You've also loved our camp specific Instagram stories. Andover, one of our new camps for 2022, and Chislehurst shared some special insights last week. Thanks, camps!
Whilst a number of our camps closed on Friday, we've still got 1 more week of fun left this summer. Let the good times roll!
#summeroffun
Want to find out what else we've been doing so far this summer? Take a look at our highlights from 18th to 22nd July, 25th to 29th July, 1st to 5th August and 8th to 12th August.