Kids Camps: Play & Learn - Fota Wildlife Park

Kids Camps: Play & Learn

Kids Camps: Play & Learn

Childhood is all about magical experiences, and here at Fota Wildlife Park, we’ve created a programme of activity camps for kids that are guaranteed to be remembered forever.

We’ve been busy this year, coming up with an excellent range of activities and events to keep everyone inspired and ensure that your little ones have the time of their lives when they spend their holidays with us.

Our Children’s Activity Camps cater for children from the age of five to twelve years old and run during the Easter and Summer holidays. We also run activity days during the October half term, and all our supervisors love to make learning fun.

You can feel confident that your children are developing a lifelong love of conservation and wildlife that will grow as they get older. Many children return to us again and again for our educational activity camps, and we are proud to be supporting the next generation of conservationists and biologists!

UPDATE – Unfortunately 2024 Easter Camps will not be taking place.

What Do Children Do During Activity Camps?

Fota Kids Camps
Activity camps are varied and challenging, with fun as the main element! We focus on a different concept each day, such as arts and crafts or ecology and the environment, and we approach all of these areas through play to enable the children to develop new skills and knowledge while having a great time.

If your children love animals, Fota Wildlife Park is the perfect place to nurture this and spend time with some fascinating creatures. Children will learn about many different species and gain an understanding of the importance of conserving diverse species of animals and plants across the world. Our animal habitats are carefully designed to promote biodiversity and encourage natural behaviour, and these are exciting concepts that young children are often passionate about.

Discover Our Animals And Their Homes

Fota baby giraffe
Our younger learners are always excited to find out more about the animals they see as they get to know the Park, and hearing from the rangers about their daily experience of caring for the creatures here can help to develop their understanding of different species, as well as concepts such as extinction and habitats. These ideas are built upon in groups of eight children to one member of staff, enabling children them to really get to grips with them. Visiting various habitats, for example, and finding out which animals thrive within them, is a great way for children to really understand why different animals make homes in different places, and what can happen to the species and the ecosystem when their habitats are threatened.

Many of our young visitors love to get up close and personal with fascinating creatures such as Elvis the seal, whose home is perfectly located in Cork Harbour. This is the perfect location for our sea creatures, and it enables the children to discover the estuarine environment which provides an ideal feeding ground. Our entertaining Humboldt penguins make their home here, too, and have proved to be one of our most popular animal species among the children who come to learn with us.

Personal Education And Activity Programmes

education camps larry
We have been running activity camps at Fota Wildlife Park since 1995, and we believe that our great feedback is a good sign that we’re getting it right! Our priority is to share our enthusiasm for the work we do with our young participants, and we will be delighted to encourage them to explore their own areas of interest in the future.

We often find that stepping out of their usual school environment and confronting new ideas and challenges helps to develop confidence and practical skills as well as knowledge. Children as young as five are fascinated by concepts like conservation, and we believe that introducing these at an early stage, in age-appropriate ways, is the best way to nurture a lifelong love of the planet and the diverse species it is home to.

Here at Fota, we believe that education should always be a positive experience, and our camps enable the discovery of complex issues such as ecology, nature studies and the physical sciences through play. This means that even very young children get an interesting and inspiring grounding in these subjects, which can help them in every area of their education in the future.

Find Out More About Our Activity Camps

UPDATE – Unfortunately our 2024 Easter Activity Camps will not be going ahead. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

To find out more about our activity camps and obtain a full list of camp dates, simply call us on (021) 4812678. Numbers are limited for these popular camps, so early booking is essential to secure your child’s place. Discounts are available for members and groups of three children or more, and for attendance for several days.

We hope that your children will come home full of information and fascinating facts about their days with us, but we understand that they are often too tired to share many of the details! We will always be happy to chat to you about the content of our programmes and the way in which your child can benefit from these, and we welcome feedback on our content and delivery, too.

Our activity camps run from 10am-3pm on selected days throughout the school holidays, and children are welcome to attend for as many days as you wish. Children attending Activity Camps should be dropped off at the Fota Wildlife Park Education Centre, and collected from here at the end of the day. Please note that activities vary from day to day, and you will be able to find out more about our programmes when booking to enable you select specific days that relate to your child’s interests.

The Environment Funday held during our Summer Camps is sponsored by the Environmental Awareness Unit of Cork County Council, and we are very grateful for this kind support. Much of our work at Fota is done in conjunction with other agencies and groups, and we believe in a community approach to achieve the very best outcomes for the species we work to protect. We also apply this approach on a global scale, working with other zoos and Wildlife Parks across Europe in order to make the most of our ability to impact on conservation and biodiversity for the future.



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