Ask any parent what makes a good holiday camp and you’ll get a fairly predictable list: keeps the children busy, wears them out, gets them off screens. All reasonable. But after years of watching how children respond to different settings, I’ve come to think we’re often measuring the wrong things.
A camp that simply fills the hours is not the same as a camp that does a child good. The difference is easy to miss on a booking page, yet it shapes whether a week off school leaves a child restless or genuinely brighter.
Busy is not the same as engaged
There’s a temptation to judge a camp by how full the timetable looks. Ten activities before lunch must mean value for money. In practice, a rushed schedule often produces the opposite of what parents hope for: overstimulated children who never settle into anything properly.
Research on children’s play consistently points the same way. Depth matters more than variety. A child who spends forty minutes building something, solving a problem or finishing a game learns far more than one hurried through eight half-started activities. When you read a camp’s description, look past the length of the activity list and ask whether there’s room to actually get absorbed in something.
The quiet importance of the staff
If I could give parents one piece of advice, it would be to pay attention to the adults, not the equipment. Climbing walls and craft supplies are lovely, but they don’t reassure a nervous seven-year-old on day one, or notice the child hovering at the edge of a group.
Good camps invest in people who know how to read a room full of children. That’s harder to advertise than a bouncy castle, so it’s worth asking directly: what’s the ratio of staff to children, how are they trained, and how do they handle the child who doesn’t want to join in? The answers tell you more than any photo gallery.
Structure that leaves room to breathe
The best holiday provision tends to sit in a comfortable middle ground. Enough structure that children feel secure and know what’s coming, but enough flexibility that they can follow their own interests within it. Well-run settings such as a holiday camp that balances structured activities with genuine free play tend to understand this instinctively, and it shows in how relaxed the children look.
Too rigid, and camp becomes another version of school. Too loose, and anxious children drift without support. The sweet spot is a rhythm to the day that children can rely on, with pockets of choice built in.
Ask what a child brings home
Here’s a small test I’d encourage. At the end of a camp day, notice what your child talks about. Is it a story, a friendship, something they made or figured out? Or is it simply a list of things that happened to them?
That distinction reveals whether the camp treated your child as a participant or a passenger. Camps like Club Excel that emphasise genuine involvement tend to send children home with the former: not just tired, but with something to say for themselves.
A word on the summer scramble
Finally, resist the pressure to book purely on convenience or price. Both matter, of course, and no parent has infinite options around work and logistics. But the cheapest or nearest choice isn’t automatically the right one, and a slightly better setting can change the whole tone of a holiday.
Spend ten minutes asking the questions above before you commit. A thoughtful camp will welcome them. That willingness to be asked is, in itself, a rather good sign.
You can find more about a considered approach to holiday provision at https://clubexcel.co.uk.
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*This article was written by the team at Club Excel, a provider of holiday camps and wraparound childcare for primary-age children across the region. Club Excel focuses on active, sociable days that balance structure with free play, delivered by trained staff who put each child’s experience first.*
