Boroondara Park PS Year 5 Camp Blog

On a warm, sunny, and extremely exciting Wednesday morning the Boroondara Park PS crew rolled into The Summit to kick off what turned out to be an amazing three-day camp. All was in readiness and once the staff and I had introduced ourselves and our Five Keys to a great camp: Have Fun, Play All In, Make Lots of Mistakes, Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable, and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If, we headed down into the park.

First up we played a couple of games and then got into the first rotation of our major activities, those being our Giant Swing, Rock Wall, Tash’s Ladder, Inflatable City, and Snowy River Challenge. The students were asked to come up with a group name they wanted to be known as for the remainder of camp, and they didn't disappoint!

Group 1 = The Delightful Ducks

Group 2 = Little Onions

Group 3 = Plus Ultra

Group 4 = The Quackadoodle Quackers

Group 5 = Sweaty Bananas

The energy was high, and it was fantastic to see some real breakthroughs of courage, creativity, and teamwork so early on camp. After the first rotation of activities, the groups came together to build a Tribe Identity complete with a flag and a logo to put on it, with the values they wanted to represent over their time at camp.

For some of our boys, however, the energy unfortunately carried through into the early hours of the morning, and by breakfast, we had many unwilling volunteers for the day's first duty group. It was about halfway through the morning dishes that the seven boys and camp coach agreed not to tell the teachers how much fun the dishes were!

The first half of Thursday saw the completion of three more rounds of activities, with the Giant Swing being the big highlight of the day. That afternoon we ran our epic Monster Course, our mud run through several physical activities that got everyone, including the coaches and teachers, wet, muddy, and exhausted. The Quackadoodle Quackers recorded the best improvement time to win the challenge, but every group did amazingly. We were also incredibly lucky with the weather and were able to open our water slide to cap off what was an incredible day.

On Friday, the students were put through the final rotation of activities, and as tired as they all were, they finished very strongly. They were then asked to vote for their tribe's Values winner or the person they felt committed most to our Five Keys. We then wrapped up the day with some thank you’s read out the times and revealed the Values winner from each group.

The final surprise was a reward for the winners, a lap in our World War II army tank, through the mud and hills of our tank track before going over a car! The teachers were also given a lap before jumping on the bus and heading home.

The times and scores for the activities and the values winners were:

Thank you all again from me, Mim, Zoe, Sarah, and Jacob, and we can't wait to see the Boroondara Park students back again next year.

Adam

The Summit