Playscheme
Turtle CYP, formerly known as the ‘Four Towns Play Association’ and ‘South Gloucestershire Playscheme’ run free playschemes for children in the school holidays at venues across South Gloucestershire including Patchway, Stoke Gifford, Bradley Stoke, Kingswood and Yate.
The playscheme offers free play sessions for children from 5 – 11 years of age who live or go to school in South Gloucestershire. We support local children to play and learn in the presence of others in a safe and child-friendly environment. We run play sessions during the school holidays – four weeks in the summer break, one week at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, and half term family fun days in February, October and Whitsun.
Our aim is to ensure children have fun and also to provide a break for parents. The scheme provides a safe and fun environment for children to enjoy a range of activities including arts, crafts, sports and team games.
“It’s a wonderful summer club for my children. They see friends and enjoy new activities. It’s a much needed break for me. We would really struggle without it. ”
Report from our Winter playscheme and Family sessions 2025
Because of how Christmas fell on particular days this year we ran the playscheme on 3 days at the start of school holidays in December. Lots of fun was had at Patchway, Yate and Kingswood Park sessions on Saturday. We entertained 43 children with crafting including making Christmas decorations, bird feeders, bracelets, snowflakes, reindeer and snowman crafts and games and meeting new friends. And of course there was lots of glitter!
And we also held 6 family play sessions too.
Report from our Summer 2025 events
Our summer holiday free playscheme has finished and school is starting again. But over the summer we held sessions in Patchway, Bradley Stoke, Stoke Gifford, Little Stoke, Kingswood and Yate. We had sports, crafts, games, lunches, music and lots of fun. And visits from local entertainers. Some days we needed to shelter from the sun and other days shelter from rain! Read more about it in our report below.
Look out for more announcements about our next half-term and Easter holiday plans on our Facebook page.
One huge thank you to the following funders that have given us funding for the Summer and Winter play schemes:
Every year we apply to lots of different funding pots. We feel it’s important to ensure that there is no cost to the families that attend our scheme. So a big thank you to:
- South Glos Council via Department of Education (DfE) – Holiday Activities & Food Programme
- South Glos Council – Cost of living fund,
- South Glos Council – Kingswood Park Fund via National Lottery Heritage Fund
- Kingswood Town Council.
Additional funders for the Winter 2025 Playscheme include the National Lottery Community Fund
Thank you to Kingswood Town Council
It was great to meet Kingswood Town Council in Kingswood Park in April 2025 and be presented with a cheque to help us deliver play sessions in Kingswood during this Easter and then our Summer holidays.
