Bundoora Secondary College Year 8 Camp Blog

On the stunning morning of Monday the 15th of May, The Summit welcomed back the year eight students and teachers of Bundoora Secondary. Students were promptly shown to their Cabin accommodation, where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After they got settled, they were welcomed into The Lodge where coach Timmay gave an introduction to camp and the coaches! Tim introduced Mim, Yves, Cheyenne, Sunny, and their team leader Spinks! Timmay then handed it over to Spinks to give out The Summit’s very own recipe to the best camp ever, and the ingredients to that were the Five Keys of camp. These five keys are:

Have Fun
Play All In
Make Lots of Mistakes
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Don’t Go Home Wondering What If

Without further ado, we all head down to the activities hub and started with a game of 50 Up. Then Cheyenne and Yves taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Timmay telling everyone an epic goal-setting strategy that would help us to grow our comfort zones and conquer challenging activities.

Campers started their first activity with an initiative challenge that involved working together to solve a puzzle. This tested teamwork and leadership, but teams rose to the challenge! Then we moved on to our first activity rotation. The activities that campers got to do at the camp were: Laser Skirmish, Scavenger Hunt, Skybridge, Snowy River Challenge, Giant Swing, and the Summit Window. This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust creativity, and problem-solving (to name a few!)

Day one ended in doing a Tribe Identity Challenge because once teams had come up with some unique team names, they were asked to come together and use their artistic ability to create a flag to represent them around camp! Campers were also introduced to a camp tradition called GMICs, which stands for “Great Moments in Camp” - this is all about writing down and acknowledging some of the awesome moments we’ve seen.

Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intention and learning about how important it is to choose to focus on the things we can control, in order to get the most out of every day (but especially at camp) When we got down into the park, we got all warmed up with a group game of Pirates, then leaped into three legendary activity rotations. Even though the weather was rainy, this didn’t stop students because they powered through, smashing goals and having all the fun.

After lunch, it was time to do the famous Monster Course. This was a feat of teamwork, strength, and resilience as students completed a huge first lap, but were shocked to find out that the winning team isn’t the fastest team, but the team that improves the most on their SECOND LAP. As a special treat, campers got to finish the second lap with a ride on the waterslide! That was a highlight for many!

As the last day rolled around Coach Spinks took the kids through a gratitude session, where the Students were asked to think about who and or what makes them feel grateful and to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. The group game played was Jockeys to warm the students up and as the final rotation came to a close the students were asked to vote for someone in their tribe who represented/embodied the Five Keys the most throughout camp. (These are listed below along with the results)