Boroondara Park PS Year 5 Camp Blog

When the bus from Boroondara Park PS rolled through the gates of the Summit on Wednesday morning of the last week of term, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing few days. The energy and enthusiasm from all the students had everyone bouncing off the walls and we loved it. The other coaches and I gathered in the Stadium with them to introduce ourselves and our Five Keys of Have Fun, Play All In, Make Mistakes, Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If, before playing a couple of games, showing everyone our harnesses and how to set themselves Targets, Stretches and Super Stretches, and getting into our first round of activities.

Tash’s Ladder and the Giant Swing were instant highlights, the Rock Wall was awesome, Snowy River Challenge was wet and scary and Inflatables was a whole heap of fun. There were many personal boundaries pushed and fears overcome, with too many kids pushing beyond what they first thought they were capable of.

Towards the end of the first session, each group was asked to come up with a name for themselves that was agreed upon by all, and these are the names they came up with;

Grp 1 - Slay

Grp 2 - Ducks

Grp 3 - The Legendary Rubbernana Dats

Grp 4 - The Valiants

After a taste of what the activities were we all went back to the Stadium for afternoon tea and to sit and create a Tribe Identity for each group using the group names, a logo and values for each tribe. We then made a flag which every group carried proudly for the duration of camp.

After a bush walk on Monday night, Tuesday was kicked off with a morning Intentions chat from Kid President before getting straight into the next round of activities. The day was a bit chilly but everyone was having so much fun that no one seemed to notice!

Thursday just after lunch we were about to play a couple of games when we received an emergency call for help from Gumbuya World. Some of their Magical Creatures had escaped and were seen hiding around the grounds of The Summit! The incredible students of Boroondara Park came to the rescue helping us catch these awesome creatures and work out some unusual traits that the adults couldn’t work out. They escorted the creatures back to the BBQ Shelter for recording and identification in their teams and were amazing at it. The people at Gumbuya World were all incredibly appreciative of our extensive work (Just please don’t ask them about it 🙂)

Thursday afternoon we also embarked on our epic Monster Course, a mud run around the grounds of The Summit involving tyres, charades, cargo nets, holey buckets, dirt, water, a ball pit and a whole lot of fun! The course was scored using each team's improvement time from the first lap to the surprise second lap, with everyone doing amazingly, but being dominated by The Ducks!

Wednesday started with another chat about gratitude from Kid President where we also got to reminisce about our families and pets we have at home waiting for us, before wanting to make them proud by giving it our all in the last rotation.

We then asked each of the kids to vote on a Values winner, or the person in their group they felt used our Five Keys the best to make camp a rewarding experience for not only themselves but their whole team. The winners are listed below with all the times for each of the recordable activities.  We gathered at the BBQ Shelter to say our thank yous to all the people involved in making this camp epic before reading out the winners of the various activities.

Thank you so much to Shannon, Kristen and the parents and students of Boroondara Park Primary School for an awesome week. You were all so incredibly dedicated to ensuring your camp was an amazing experience. We at The Summit can’t wait to have you back again soon.

Adam, Mim, Cal, Fran, and Liam