Inflatable Bouncy Castle Fun Day
This one was a whopper! Our most successful event we've hosted ourselves on so many levels. Check out the photos below for the set-up of this event.
We cannot post photos of the event in action; We wouldn't want to take liberties with other people's children, but suffice to say there was plenty of big smiles!
Despite the last inflatable fun day only being in October last year, we had a few different inflatables out for people to enjoy. We saw that the bouncy castles with slides were a big hit, so we made sure we included a few more of them this time, too!
We feel like we've nailed the layout in this hall, so we've pretty much kept this blueprint and will make minor changes eacht ime we host one to make sure we keep things interesting and put out new equipment.
This time round we invited a professional company to host the concession stand, enabling us to concentrate on the event itself and not be distracted by hot dogs, slush and other goodies. This worked really well. We asked Sugar Crush Entertainment to help us out and they did a brilliant job. It was the first time we was able to offer teas and coffees as well as candyfloss and other items. They're a fantastic husband and wife team that we hope will return at future events!
We also added a balance beam bench for children only. This bench was intended to be a "friendship bench" where children who wanted someone to play with could sit down and have others ask them to come and play! Sadly, this didn't quite work out as intended. At almost all of the sessions we saw more parents or carers than we had anticipated; There was often a 1:1 ratio or even 2:1 ratio of adults to children, which meant more space and seats where needed. We found that despite the notices we had a lot of parents use the benches to take the weight off. There was enough seats for each parent or adult, but sometimes seats where used to pile up coats and bags, or people left spaces rather than sit next to a stranger. We need to have a think about how we can manage that a little differently next time.
The highlight of the entire two days however was the SEN session. We made a slot exclusive to SEN children and their siblings and it was brilliant seeing them enjoy themselves on the bouncy castles.
At the inflatable event back in October a parent approached us who wanted to let us know that he had autism. She was worried that we may think he wasn't listening (when in reality he just couldn't process verbal information very well when stimulated). She explained that he had coped really well, but it was a big risk for her; She often worried about how he may cope in any given situation and how other people would in turn react to him or judge her as a parent. She explained that many autistic children can become over stimulated and so rather than attend events like this, they simply stay at home and it's very isolating.
Imagine that for a moment. You have a child that is perfectly capable of playing and having fun or longs for the chance to use a disco dome, would like to go and would enjoy themselves, to play and have fun, but you feel trapped and unable to go because of how others might react. We did think about that. In fact we thought about it a lot and decided that we would host a SEN exclusive session, inspired by our conversation with that little boys mum.
We joined some SEN groups and learned quite a bit about how we could be better hosts. We quickly decided to do away with the whistles, but wasn't sure what to replace them with until we saw that many autistic children's ability to process verbal information diminishes as they become more stimulated. We replaced the marshall's whistles with action cards instead. We closed the curtains so as to remove additional sources of light. We halved the capcity of the entire session so there was less noise, easier for children to roam freely on whatever took their fancy and easier for us to help manage things. We removed the music for the session as another sense input and decided that while we would loosely try to manage "pushing in" that it wasn't the end of the world if a child wasn't able to comprehend the concept; It was after-all at half capacity and most of the time anyone could walk up to any inflatable and immediately have a turn. The only exception to this is the giant slide which needs to be carefully staffed and managed.
We tried our hardest to understand how we could be better hosts to these children, but also the parents; Putting them at ease instead of being on constant tender hooks. We made sure we told them about the clam room we had available where anyone could use a quiet room specifically darkened and soothing should they feel the need, we made sure it was clear that we would be laid back on behaviour and expect others to be the same, pushing in wasn't the end of the world and to expect some children to make noises or just be their unique selves. We wouldn't tolerate any physical issues between children, but I'm pleased to say that there was no such issues and everyone played very nicely together.
It was hands down the most rewarding session we have ever hosted. We received an enourmous amount of positive feedback from the entire SEN community as well as very acute positive feedback in person from the parents of children that attended. We wasn't anticipating just how emotional it would be, the gratitude was quite over-whelming. Children who previously was never able to attend such events came for the first time ever, parents started the holidays with a great beginning, grand parents thanked us for the thought put in. It was really very lovely to hear, but the nicest thing was genuinely seeing so many children just be themselves and be allowed to be themselves. I'll leave this post with a review from one of the parents that attended the SEN session:
Bouncy Castle Hire Welling
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