By the Open Arms Team, Lee Lazenby and Janet Malsch
Over the two-week Easter school holidays, we ran six community events at Open Arms aimed at families. These were free to attend and most had food as well as refreshments provided. Rotherham Healthy Holidays were keen to support these family activities too and offered to part fund the sessions.
The first of our Easter events kicked off at Dalton Parish Hall with the introduction to the very talented Mr Dan who hopefully we will be seeing more of going forward at our upcoming events throughout 2024/2025.
He has such a remarkable memory, able to remember all the children’s names who took an active part on what turned out to be one of our most successful and enjoyable workshops to date, not only in our eyes but both adults and children attending the Circus Workshop.
Mr Dan completely changed his persona as soon as he put on his circus attire.
They say pictures say a thousand words and the feedback received at the event was fantastic.
At our session at Springwell Gardens Community Centre we welcomed the return of Patsy, literally with open arms. She was well received by all, the last time she made an appearance, providing 5 stars + entertainment when presenting us with her magic/fun show event.
Patsy was able to grab the children’s attention knowing exactly what they were wanting. Attention, fun, entertainment, and lots of prizes to boot, and she happily delivered in abundance.
We had a lovely event at Canklow Pavillion doing crafts during the Easter Holidays as part of the Open Arms Community Get Togethers, 7 Adults brought along 12 children who all expresses gratitude for us putting on the event, Nic & Janet were attentive to the needs of the children and kept them occupied throughout the afternoon, all the children were in their element and couldn’t believe there was no cost to it all, parents said it was so nice to relax and watch the children spend time away from their screens!
We were then back at Springwell for a children’s soft play session. This was the turn of our toddler community, catering for children up to the age of approximately 10 years of age. We have had the pleasure of hosting this activity on numerous occasions and it always goes down well.
This time we were lucky to have two separate parts of this display integrated together, thus allowing more choice, adventure, and interaction to be discovered.
Food has been presented at most of our events and today was no exception. It was certainly appreciated on this occasion due to the amount of energy which must have been burnt on the day.
Once more, another successful event delivered on the Open Arms Project. Feedback received reflected.
We did notice that some of our young visitors seem to be more interested in the games we put out. It was nice to see them wanting to play with the adults.
Our final session was at Liberty Church with Jungle Jo on Friday the 12th of April.
This was a very successful event with two sessions in the afternoon offering more families to experience the exceptional animal and critters show of Jungle Jo. This has been a favourite amongst the children which has been an ongoing part of our holiday events offer. We welcomed many new families but also saw familiar faces returning for the event. It has been great to see the confidence grow in children as they got to hold and find out about these exotic animals.
