Holiday Camp Run Sheet: Drop-Off, Groups, Breaks and Pick-Up That Run Smoothly

It's 8:52 on the first Monday of the holidays. Your holiday camp run sheet is a sticky note that says warm-up, games, lunch, there are close to forty kids in the foyer, and a parent is asking which group her twins are in. A proper holiday camp run sheet fixes that before it starts: who is where, at what time, with which coach, and how every child gets handed back to the right adult at 3pm.

Below: a template day to copy, a worked example for group sizes, and a pick-up routine that doesn't rely on anyone's memory. If you're still at the planning and pricing stage, start with our guide to planning, pricing and selling out school holiday sports camps and come back here once the bookings are in.

What a holiday camp run sheet actually needs to cover

A run sheet is not a lesson plan. Your coaches can plan the drills. The run sheet answers the logistics questions that cause chaos when nobody has answered them:

• Time: every block of the day, including the boring ones like changeovers and toilet breaks.
• Place: which court, field or room each group is in for each block.
• People: which coach owns which group, and who is floating.
• Handover points: arrival, lunch, and pick-up, where kids are most likely to go missing in plain sight.
• What happens if: rain, an injury, a late parent, a child not on the list.

If a casual coach who has never worked at your venue can pick up the sheet at 8am and run their group without asking you anything, it's done.

Before day one: the prep that makes the run sheet work

The run sheet falls over if the inputs are wrong. Lock these in by the Friday before camp:

1. A final roster with ages. You can't build groups from a booking total. You need each child's age or school year.
2. Medical and allergy notes, summarised. One page per group, kept with that group's coach, not in a folder at the desk.
3. Authorised collectors. Who can pick each child up, and any child who must not be released to a particular person.
4. Staff confirmed and briefed. Names against groups, plus one site lead who doesn't own a group.
5. A wet-weather fallback. If any of your day is outdoors, decide the indoor version now. Our post on writing a wet-weather policy parents actually accept covers the comms side.
6. A parent message sent. Drop-off time, what to bring, what to label, and where to collect. One email plus an SMS the night before tends to land.

Supervision requirements, working with children checks and first aid obligations vary by state and by sport. Treat everything in this post as planning guidance, and confirm the rules with your state's official sources, your sport's governing body and your insurer.

The hour-by-hour holiday camp run sheet template

Here's a full-day template for a 9am to 3pm camp. Adjust the clock, keep the shape.

Two things matter more than the exact times. Every block has a named owner, and there's no gap where a group is technically between people.

How to set group sizes and coach ratios

Group size is where first-time camps quietly go wrong. Too big and the coach becomes a crowd controller.

Here's a worked example. Assume 40 kids aged 6 to 12, a venue with four usable spaces, and a planning target of around one coach per 10 kids for active sport. That target is our assumption for this example, not a compliance figure: check your own state and insurer requirements, and go tighter for younger kids or higher-risk activities.

That's five staff for 40 kids. The site lead is the one most first-timers try to cut, and they're the one who handles the injured kid, the parent at the desk and the coach who needs a toilet break, without leaving a group short.

A few rules of thumb from camps we've seen run well:

• Group by age first, then fix friendships. Siblings and mates asking to be together is fine if the age gap is small. Don't put a six-year-old in with twelve-year-olds to keep a family happy.
• Give each group a colour or name. Coloured bibs or wristbands make a head count across a busy hall a ten-second job.
• Count at every transition. Start of a station, end of a station, before and after lunch. The coach says the number out loud to the site lead.

We built Sweepa's program and camp registration so ages, medical notes and attendance sit against each child from the moment a parent books, which means grouping on Friday is sorting a list rather than reading forty emails.

Rotation timing that survives real kids

Rotations are where a tidy run sheet meets reality. Kids walk slowly, someone needs a drink, and a coach runs over because the game got good.

The fix is to build the friction into the clock:

• Match stations to groups. Four groups means four stations. If you only have three skill stations, make the fourth a free game or a drink-and-shade break. Never have a group waiting with nothing to do.
• Use 35 minutes on, 5 minutes moving. Blow a warning whistle at minute 30, stop at 35, start the next station at 40. Five minutes sounds generous until you've moved a group of seven-year-olds across a car park.
• Rotate in one direction. Station 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, always clockwise. Draw it on a whiteboard at the door.
• One clock rules. The site lead calls changeovers, not individual coaches. A coach who runs over makes the next group wait.

The drop-off and pick-up routine

This is the part that actually goes wrong on the floor. A setup we see a lot on day one: one coach at the desk with a printed list, a queue of parents out the door, kids drifting off to kick balls around the hall, and nobody sure who has arrived. Then at 3pm the same desk gets swamped, a child leaves with a friend's parent because everyone assumed it was arranged, and a coach is still standing with a kid at 3:40 with no phone number to hand.

A routine that holds up looks like this.

Drop-off (8:30 to 9:00)

• Open the doors at the advertised time, not earlier, unless you've staffed it.
• Parents sign the child in at the desk. The desk coach marks attendance and points the child to their group's colour-coded waiting spot.
• Each group coach stands at their spot with their list and counts as kids arrive.
• At 9:00 the site lead checks anyone booked but not arrived, and sends a quick SMS to those parents.

Pick-up (2:30 to 3:00)

• Kids stay in their groups, seated, with their bags. Nobody wanders to the gate.
• Parents come to one collection point. The coach releases the child only to a listed collector, and marks them signed out.
• If someone not on the list turns up, the child stays put while the site lead calls the parent. No exceptions, even if the child says it's fine.
• At 3:00, any remaining kids move to the site lead with a second staff member. Two adults stay until the last child is collected.

The same pattern applies to tracking attendance in coaching programs: mark it at the door, not from memory at the end of the day.

Week-one mistakes we see a lot

• No site lead. Everyone owns a group, so nobody can deal with problems.
• Lunch as a free-for-all. Kids scatter, coaches eat together, supervision drops at the worst time.
• Medical notes at the desk. The coach with the allergic child needs the information, not the front counter.
• Communicating once. One email three weeks out doesn't get read. Send a reminder the night before and a short update if anything changes. Our guide to parent emails and SMS that get read has templates.
• Skipping the debrief. Ten minutes at 3:15 fixes Tuesday. Without it, you repeat Monday's problems all week.

If you're running camps alongside court hire, parties and programs, it helps to see everything in one system. Have a look at the full Sweepa feature list to see how registrations, payments and parent comms sit together.

Your run sheet checklist for Monday morning

Print this and stick it next to the desk:

• [ ] Final roster with ages, split into named or coloured groups
• [ ] One page of medical and allergy notes per group, with that group's coach
• [ ] Authorised collector list printed and on the desk
• [ ] Staff assigned to groups, plus a site lead with no group
• [ ] Stations set up to match the number of groups
• [ ] Rotation order drawn on a whiteboard at the entry
• [ ] Changeover whistle times agreed: warning at 30, stop at 35, start at 40
• [ ] Lunch supervision shifts named
• [ ] Wet-weather version of the day decided
• [ ] Night-before SMS sent with drop-off time and collection point
• [ ] 3:15 debrief in the diary for every day of camp