How to Plan a School Activity Day at an Adventure Park

Adventure parks are the ultimate school trip; fun, physicality, and plenty of opportunities to learn new skills, spark new passions, and strengthen bonds between peers. As such a popular choice for school groups of varying ages, here we’ll provide a comprehensive guide for planning a successful school activity day at an adventure park such as Gripped, which features high ropes, bag jump, and zip lining.

Benefits of an adventure park school activity day

Of course, it’s not just the sheer fun of an adventure park that appeals to those looking for engaging activities for school groups; it’s all the other benefits that complement a child’s education and development. These include: 

Physical benefits

Activities such as high ropes can be reasonably demanding in a physical sense, which creates opportunities for increasing heart rate, strengthening muscles, improving coordination and balance, and promoting flexibility. Childhood is a crucial time for building physical fitness that lasts a lifetime - it’s also the prime time to plant the seed for a lifelong love of movement. 

Mental and emotional benefits

Conquering your nerves, navigating at height, and working together with your peers are all considered somewhat challenging, which means there’s room to build confidence, bond with others through teamwork, and develop crucial problem-solving skills. The impact on a child’s self-esteem can be powerful, bolstering their self of self through their adventurous achievements. 

Educational benefits 

Studies can be taxing, whatever stage of learning a child is at; an adventure park trip provides a welcome break, enabling children to return to the classroom refreshed and ready to crack on. 

Choosing the right adventure park

It’s important to research your options, and you’ll likely be guided by Google searches such as ‘adventure parks near me’. It’s essential to consider safety records, variety of activities, location, and accessibility when making your selection, checking reviews from other schools and parents, ensuring that any testimonials you take heed of are from credible sources. 

Planning the logistics

As anyone who organises school group outings will know, the logistics of the trip is the most time consuming and involved part of the planning. Broadly, you can break it down into the following areas: 

Budgeting

There are several costs to consider for a school trip to an adventure park, such as entry fees, transportation, meals, and any additional expenses. This is the point at which to decide whether you’ll ask parents and guardians to contribute to the cost of attending. 

Transportation

The go-to transport of choice is a bus or a coach, but a train could be another viable option, provided that the entire journey still ticks safety and convenience boxes. 

Permission slips and medical forms

Requesting consent from parents and guardians is part and parcel of the school trip process, so ensure you leave enough time to distribute the permission communications (and chase these up where necessary). You’ll also need to review any medical information on file that may need to be considered for the day and seek clarification and updates just in case anything has changed. 

There are lots of resources online that can help teachers and school staff with this part of the process, including letter templates and checklists.

Creating an itinerary

A school trip can feel like chaos at the best of times, so ensure it’s at least organised chaos by creating an itinerary for the day, to ensure everyone gets to do the activities they want to do - few will want to miss out on ziplining, for example!

Nailing down approximate timing for your arrival to the park, a briefing, the activities themselves and the order that your groups will do them in, the all-important lunch, and your departure will help the day flow smoothly. 

Ensuring safety and supervision

Safety is critical during any school outing, but the very nature of an adventure park means that it’s more important than ever to be across it. Start by assigning roles and responsibilities to teachers and volunteers so that every child has a member of staff close by, and ensure that a portion of these are trained first aiders. Carve out time for pre-visit briefings for students and staff, and liaise with park staff to ensure that the specific safety rules of the park and the activities are built in. 

Maximising the experience

A day at an adventure park such as Gripped should be a day to remember for all the right reasons, though there may be some with some understandable anxieties about tackling heights. We’ve put together some advice for conquering a fear of heights that could be helpful, particularly for older students. 

During the trip, it can be easy to get so wrapped up in the logistics, but don’t forget to document all the excitement through photos and videos if you can, creating a post-event slideshow or video for students and parents that remind them of what they’ve achieved. 

Following the trip, you could encourage reflective activities, such as journaling, group discussions, and presentations, to enable students to share their experiences, and appreciate what it taught them; there’s likely to be at least a few students who have learned plenty about themselves from facing their fears!

Choose Gripped for your school activity trip

For kids, a day at Gripped is unmatched - there’s few other places where such fun and exhilaration can be achieved safely. This makes us a fantastic destination for school trips, with a raft of outdoor activities for kids to get to ‘grips’ with. 

For just £24 per person for secondary schools and £20 per person for Year 6s, schools can visit Monday - Friday during term time.