Active Schools Holiday Camps
While the schools take a break between terms, the Active Schools Team are still busy with a range of holiday camp activities across Argyll and Bute.
These camps provide a safe, fun environment for children to experience a range of exciting sports and physical activity opportunities. Our coaches help them get involved, develop core motor and sport specific skills and give them a chance to make new friends. It’s also a great way to introduce young people to liveArgyll facilities and become familiar with what we have to offer.
Camps vary in length depending on location and demand. Some sport specific coaching camps will be four or five days, while others might be single day tasters.
Multi-sport camps will include sessions like football, tag rugby, basketball, netball, athletics and dodgeball over the day. One of the daily activity sessions is usually a less strenuous team building or ‘chill out’ activity and come the summer we sometimes even get out kayaking or paddleboarding.
Many of our camps are run in partnership with volunteers from local clubs and we also engage our Sport Leaders, older pupils in S5 and S6 who have been trained as coaches and are building up their coaching experience and volunteer hours.
This Easter, there were Active Schools camps in Oban, Dunoon, Rothesay, and Helensburgh. 60 young people packed out the camps in Helensburgh while 31 keen footballers were out every day on the Oban High School pitches. A full house of gymnastics camps went down well in Dunoon and Rothesay where there were also trampolining sessions on the go.
Our newest Active Schools Co-ordinator, Charlotte Forbes in Oban said, “It was fantastic to witness the sportsmanship and all the kids working well as a team – look out for our Summer Camp dates coming out soon ”
We are always thinking about how we can be more inclusive in our offer and this Easter saw Co-ordinators, Lyndsay and Jo, put on a Stay and Play session at Dunoon Grammar School Gym. This was specifically designed for young people with autism spectrum
disorder. They came along with a parent and got to play on the gymnastics equipment with Lindsay and Jo helping guide activity. It really wasn’t clear who was having more fun and given the success of the session we are planning to do more of these in the future.
This summer we will also be offering some smaller, more local activity days in places that are further out from the major towns.
If you think you might have an idea for a different type of sport or physical activity camp then we would love to hear from you. Perhaps something at your own facility that is underutilised or more suited to young people. Our plans for the Summer are nearly done, but there is still time to work with us on something new or a bit different. Feel free to get in touch with James Allan, Active Schools and Sport Manager.
