Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena re opened in August 2020 after being closed for 5 months due to Covid-19. The staff spent a lot of time and effort making the club safe for everyone. Before re opening the club, a Covid-19 policy was put in place along with a risk assessment. New child friendly posters were ordered to display in the club. These posters were to remind everyone about social distancing and the importance of hand washing. Arrows were put on the stairs so everyone would know what side to walk up and down. Gracehill Afterschool club also got new hand sanitizing dispensers from Galgorm Group Ballymena.
On the 3rd August 2020 Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena re opened with all the new safety measures in place. The children were happy to be back to club and enjoyed meeting up with their friends again. The Lego, once again became the favourite, with some children building wonderful master pieces. The children decided to make a display of a rainbow, as this was the symbol used over lockdown to support all those working in the front line.
After careful planning ,the children, assisted by staff members, decided to make the rainbow using handprints. After getting aprons on, the children got their own tray of coloured paint. The children dipped their hands into the paint and then made handprints. After drying off the handprints they were cut out and a lovely colourful rainbow was created.
Gracehill Afterschool club are glad to be re opened and providing a childcare service again to all children and parents. Full time and part time spaces are still available at club. If you would like to enquire about spaces please email office@gracehillafterschoolclub.com or ring the club on 028 25638099.
This new year has been all about baking for everyone at Gracehill Afterschool Club. Our theme was about winter so of course we had to make some snowball buns. We started with crushing digestive biscuits in a bag (a great stress reliever). We then mixed the biscuit with cocoa powder, condensed milk and melted butter. Taking a marshmallow, we made a ball of the mixture and wrapped it around. Finishing off with rolling in coconut.
Chinese New Year
On 27th January we had rice and curry sauce with crunchy prawn crackers for break. This was to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Most of the children had a taste of it all and some were asking for seconds!
Valentines Day
Gracehill bake off continued for Valentines Day when we made yummy Jammy Dodger biscuits. These are made by mixing butter and sugar together in a bowl. Then we added the egg and continued to beat until it was all well mixed. Next we added the flour and folded it all together to make a dough. After the dough was ready the children enjoyed rolling out the pastry. As it was for Valentines Day we cut out heart shapes to make our lovely biscuits. After removing from the oven and cooled slightly, each child jammed the biscuits together to make our Jammy Dodger.
Pancake Day
On Tuesday 25th February Shrove Tuesday was celebrated at Gracehill with homemade pancakes. Sharon and Shannon were the cooks for the day and after making up the pancake batter of soda bread self raising flour, buttermilk, caster sugar and eggs they were to put on the hot griddle. The children had a choice of toppings which consisted of strawberries, blueberries, bananas, grapes along with either syrup, chocolate spread, sugar and butter or jam. As you can see by our photos they were really enjoyable. Gracehill bake off went down a real treat and was thoroughly enjoyed.
This month we have had lots and lots of fun and excitement getting ready for Christmas at Gracehill. The children enjoyed getting the Christmas display prepared. Carly made Santa’s sleigh and his reindeers which the children decorated by painting, sticking and lots of lovely glitter (everywhere). Santa is shown flying over the rooftops in the night starry sky! Lots of lovely baubles were decorated to finish off our display.
Christmas at Gracehill continued with all the children helping to put up the Christmas trees and decorations all around the room. Christmas wouldn’t be complete without a treat bag. Each child made up a bag with chocolate treats and Christmas pencils. These went home or hopefully not eaten in the car on the way home!
To help us celebrate Christmas at Gracehill we made delicious snowmen. These were made of giant marshmallows and chocolate coins and rolos were used to make his top hat. Strawberry laces gave him a nice scarf and chocolate chips for eyes! Everyone was pleased at how well they turned out and how tasty they were.
The annual dinner for Christmas at Gracehill had a great turn out as usual. We all had a feast of turkey with all the trimmings to fill us all up for the rest of the day! The children had great fun playing pass the parcel and musical chairs with the winners taking home a little treat!
We would like to congratulate Amber on her graduation in December. We are very proud of your achievements and wish you all the best in your new post!!
Christmas at Gracehill was fantastic for everyone. Thanks to all who gave us many lovely gifts and we want to wish you all a Happy New Year!
Over the half term break at Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena, we have been busy doing lots of exciting activities and lots of outdoor fun! As the weather has been so good, we took the opportunity get outside. The children collected leaves and acorns to use for our beautiful Autumn display. They also enjoyed playing out in the garden catching the leaves as they blew off the trees with the wind. We enjoyed walking through the crispy leaves and discovering the lovely colours of Autumn.
Half term break saw everyone off school for a full week! The staff took the chance to entertain the children by helping them make tasty witches hats. The children made these by dipping an ice cream cone in melted chocolate and placing onto a biscuit base. Sprinkles and mini sweets were added to decorate the hats. The best part was being able to lick up all the chocolate off our hands and most of them were ate before they left Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena.
Some of the children helped with carving out pumpkins during the half term break. Not everyone enjoyed the smell or cleaning out the gooey insides of the pumpkins. What a messy job but some really loved it! Samantha had great fun carving out bats with her group of kids. Shannon, our new member of staff, helped with a group to make a Harry Potter themed carving.
Some of you may have noticed a new face at Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena. We would like to welcome Shannon to our team and we hope everyone will make her feel welcome and get to know her .
Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena has been enjoying our birthday celebrations! Everyone has settled back into school life again and the homework has got well underway. The club is celebrating 10 YEARS in business, having opened in September 2009. Since then we have had lots of children through our door and have had the joy of seeing children grow and mature from Primary 1 to Primary 7.
Party time
To celebrate our 10 years we had a party with lots of yummy food. With sausages, sausage rolls and chicken dippers, and sweets and treats, no-one went home hungry. We think the buns we made at club for the birthday celebrations went down a real treat with everyone, including the staff. The children enjoyed a few party games of musical statues and musical chairs. We have found a few very competitive children in our club!
No birthday celebrations would be complete without a party bag. Each child and staff member received a bag to take home. Flossy treats provided a beautiful bar of chocolate and Toast Cullybackey made us delicious cupcakes. Thanks to Flossy Treats and Toast for such a good job and helping us for our birthday celebrations. We received many compliments from parents and staff for these delicious treats.
The birthday celebrations continued with a fantastic write up in the Ballymena Guardian. It showed some of our great activities and lovely pictures of some of our children and staff. The article covered the day to day running of the club and all the services we provide. Thanks to Ballymena Guardian for a great article and to all the local businesses who wished us well on our birthday celebrations.
Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena would also like to thank all the parents and children who have supported us in the last 10 years. We appreciate your business and have enjoyed caring for all the fantastic children.
During August we had lots of holiday fun starting with a trip to the Jet Centre. Our plans to Carnfunnock Park were abandoned due to our typical Northern Irish weather!! At the Jet Centre we started with a game of bowls where the kids were in a few teams. They showed their competitive sides as everyone wanted to win! After working up an appetite during bowling we enjoyed a lovely, tasty picnic lunch. With our tummies full we enjoyed watching the Queens Corgi in the cinema.The holiday fun continued with a dance off to the jukebox where they showed their best moves to everyone in the Jet Centre. They also had a ball spending their money and redeeming their tokens for lovely treats with sweets being the most popular!
Mini Medics
Holiday fun continued in August with a visit from Danny from Mini Medics in Ballymena. The children were split into two groups (young and old) and spent an hour each learning about inside human bodies. He talked about the importance of blood flowing around our bodies and how our organs work. Then we had fun with Annie (resuscitation doll) and learnt CPR and the recovery position. The children found this really good fun but was also a learning curve of what to do in an emergency.
Danny also showed us how a defibrillator works. This was very interesting, not only for the children, but also for the staff. Some lucky children got to wear a special T-shirt which showed up funny parts of inside our bodies on the I-pad.
Danny very kindly gave the children an activity book and a pen like a syringe. All the kids loved these and got to take them home to show off to Mums and Dads.
We had great holiday fun at Gracehill Afterschool Club this summer and now its back to school time!!!
Summer holidays at Gracehill After School Club has got off to a great start. After a relaxing few days when school had finished, we had Science Starz come to visit. Mary showed all the kids how to make slime and started off by giving each child a white lab coat. What excitement as they all felt like real life mini scientists! Mary explained the process of making slime and each child went home with their very own pot of slime.
W5
Summer holidays continued at Gracehill After School Club with an exciting visit to W5. We all boarded the big bus to Belfast with a few having a power nap on the way! On arriving at W5 we received our itinerary of all the activities we were to take part in all afternoon. After a picnic lunch of tasty sandwiches and biscuits we were ready to start our W5 journey.
First stop were workshops for all the children to participate in. The under 8 group learnt about living in space including toileting, washing and recycling! The kids found this very amusing talking about poo and pee!!
The over 8’s also learnt about the moon landing 50 years ago! They recreated moon buggies out of Knex and they then used these to compete in a race to collect rocks and the team who had the heaviest amount of rocks were the winners!
Summer holidays are not complete without a climbing adventure. The children enjoyed Climbit! so much that they all needed a well earned drink at the end. It was then time to have well supervised free play of all the different floors of W5 from water play to being shopkeepers, learning loads about science and how things work. We headed home after a very busy, enjoyable day.
Sponsorship
Gracehill After School Club also were sponsors for Northend United football club during their week at the Foyle Cup in Londonderry.
Gracehill Afterschool Ballymena had an interesting day at Media Training with MCC Computers. Gillian and Samantha joined Philip at MCC Computers on Monday 3rd June. Catherine and Ruth-Anne from McMillan Interiors in Cullybackey also were present.
Media Training at MCC Computers started with Philip explaining how to build a campaign. We need to set goals and be organized. We also need to spend time working on our media. Gracehill Afterschool Club does not need to use all forms of media. The Media Training with MCC Computers taught us to look at our strengths and weaknesses.
The essentials for our media are our website, which was set up by MCC Computers. Also blogging and social media e.g. Facebook. We also discussed the importance of producing leaflets. Sometimes its good to speak face to face and promote the Afterschool.
Media Training with MCC Computers showed us how to use words to promote our business. Photos and videos are a great way to show off Gracehill Afterschool Club. Our business can be found on PC, tablet and other forms of technology.
Gracehill Afterschool Club can be found on the internet or Facebook. Why not have a look at What we offer.
Summer Time Fun
During the months of July and August we at Gracehill Afterschool Club have arranged some fun. We are looking forward to school finishing. We will be having days out to W5 and Carnfunnock Country Park in Larne. The children will enjoy workshops about space at W5. At Carnfunnock we will have a lovely picnic and lots of fun in the fresh air.
Science Starz will make an appearance the first week in July. The children will take part in scientific experiments. Then in August we will finish off our activities with Mini Medics . Take a look at their website. Maybe in the future we will have a few doctors or nurses!
What a great time we had over Easter at Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena. The weather was good so we were able to get outside. We went to the garden to play and have fun. A great time was had hunting around for delicious Easter eggs. We found them hidden in trees and the grass and many different places. Team games and football were the most popular activities for outside in the beautiful surroundings in Gracehill village.
Also during the Easter Holidays we had a special visit. Flossy Treats, a local business in Galgorm, joined us at Gracehill Afterschool Club Ballymena to help us make very tasty Easter eggs and chocolate pizzas. After melting the chocolate the children got to choose between milk or white chocolate. We were very lucky to be able to choose both. It was a hard decision which yummy sweets to put onto our chocolate creations!! We had the delight of eating all the leftover sweets. These definitely went down a treat. I wonder did many parents get to taste the beautiful chocolate?
During the Easter Holidays all the children had a helping hand in making lots of Easter crafts. Our beautiful display had butterflies, bumblebees, Easter eggs, flowers and a colourful rainbow. The children used paints, coloured paper and pens to make these lovely creative designs. The lovely weather got the children thinking of Spring and the colourful display reminds us of this.
Making buns and smores was also on the agenda for Easter at Gracehill Afterschool Club. The children made birds nest using shredded wheat, melted chocolate and topped off with Smarties mini eggs. An afternoon treat was making smores. We used digestive biscuits, chocolate spread and marshmallows. Everyone at Gracehill Afterschool Club agreed they were delicious!!
Gracehill Afterschool Club are looking forward to Easter at the holiday club Ballymena. Schools out which means fun time. We are excited to be having a visit from local business Flossy Treats on Tuesday 16th April. The kids will have fun making lots of chocolate treats to take home. All our kids from club are invited to this event. We cant wait to see how the chocolate pizzas turn out and more importantly, how they taste!!!
Everyone will also be busy during the holiday period making yummy birds nest buns with shredded wheat and chocolate and topped with mini eggs. We hope there will be plenty for staff as well. We will have a hunt around to see if the Easter bunny has left any nice surprises! There will be plenty of opportunities for Easter crafts. These can be displayed in the club or taken home from the holiday club Ballymena.
If the weather is good we will be outside playing our favourite games of rounders, football, tennis, either in the playground or the garden and getting lots of fresh air at the same time. Lets hope the sun makes appearance!!
To find out what else we do at Gracehill Afterschool Club check out What We Offer. You can also read an article Ballymena Today wrote about Gracehill After School Club. After a busy week of fun and excitement, we will then be closed Easter Monday and Tuesday. We reopen again on Wednesday bright and early at 7.30a.m.
If you would like any more information regarding the Gracehill Afterschool Club, or holiday club Ballymena, please feel free to call in at anytime. Gillian, Samantha or Sharon will be available to discuss any queries. You can also give us a call on 028 25638099 or email us at office@gracehillafterschoolclub.com.
