Holiday Clubs 2025: What we got up to this year
Our 2025 Holiday Clubs have been a real highlight of the year, giving children across Essex a fun, friendly place to spend during their school holidays. With the help of our brilliant team, volunteers, and supporters, we packed each week with hands-on activities, laughter, and lots of memorable moments.
What is Holiday Club?
Our Holiday Clubs run once a week throughout the school holidays at our head office in Chelmsford. They offer children aged 6–10 the chance to take part in fun, creative activities, make new friends, and enjoy a healthy lunch.
This year, we extended our sessions to run from 10:30am to 3:30pm, giving children even more time to play, learn, and connect — and giving parents and carers a longer, much-needed break to rest, work, or catch up on errands.
Thanks to generous donations from our corporate supporters, our Holiday Clubs are completely free. Priority is given to lower-income families to help ease financial pressures during the school holidays.
Recap of our 2025 activities
This year we hosted eight wonderful Holiday Clubs, where we welcomed 155 attendees over the year.
We also had our highest number of low income and pupil premium families attending, with one club reaching 70% of attendees meeting this criteria.
February half term
We kicked off the year with all things LEGO - a morning of team building competitions where the children built a LEGO city, and an afternoon with Bricks 4 Kidz. The kids learnt to make space themed models.
Easter holidays
We had two holiday clubs over the easter break. The first was football with We Make Footballers. The children learned football skills such as dribbling and shooting, and worked together in teams for games.
Our second club was filled with easter-themed activities and science, beginning with an easter egg hunt, followed by an interactive session with Wonderstruck. The activity included giant bubbles big enough for the kids to stand in, slime making and spinning plates. Both educational and fun!
Summer holidays
We had four clubs over four weeks of the summer break with many different activities:
Essex Outdoors started the summer by leading a bushcraft and slack lining session, with marshmallow roasting on the fire!
Dance Days led a workshop in two very different styles - the buzz of street dance and the tradition of New Zealand’s Māori Haka.
Our very own Kids Inspire sports day with space hoppers, egg and spoon and crab walking races!
Our final summer activity was with Jigsaw Arts, and a Wicked themed session - singing, acting and dancing to music from the film, truly defying gravity with their musical theatre skills!
October half term
Our last club of the year Essex Therapy Dogs returned for the second year in a row. They brought along three gorgeous dogs, Buddy, Charlie and Rosie. The children learn about the work the organisation does, as well as the chance to walk the dogs and time for petting and cuddles!
In the afternoon we cranked up the Halloween theme by decorating biscuits and making our own paper pumpkins, bats and skulls. The day finished with a game of ‘Zombie Run’, which all adults learned is essentially BBC Traitors but with zombies!
What did the children (and parents) think of this year's clubs?
As adults we know the value Holiday Club can bring, but don’t just take it from us. The children’s words say it all. When asked for their feedback on their time with us they said:
“I really love the clubs.”
“Thank you for such a wonderful day!”
“I had a great time with you!”
“My daughter loves coming to these clubs, I love the opportunity it gives her to play with other children. It takes part of the load off me to think of (and afford) things to do with her during the holidays.’”
Thank you to our corporate sponsors and volunteers
We’re incredibly grateful to the businesses who backed our Holiday Clubs this year — without their support, these sessions simply wouldn’t happen. Thanks to donations from our corporate sponsors we were able to welcome more than 155 children were able to join in during the school holidays.
A few of our corporate partners even rolled up their sleeves and spent time volunteering with us, working alongside the Kids Inspire team and seeing for themselves the difference their support makes for local children.
One business said the following about the club they volunteered at:
“Thank you so much for having us. It was a lovely day and what an amazing thing you do for the kids. You could see how much they enjoy it.”
Thanks to our 2025 sponsors:
Cala Homes
Gadsby Wicks
Gallaghers
Great Baddow Council
Sage
Utilize
We can wait to do it all again in 2026! We will be back in February. Keep an eye on the holiday club page for updates, or sign up to our mailing list to be the first to hear our latest news.