Drouin PS Year 5 Camp Blog

When the buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on a very cold Wednesday morning packed full of 84 extremely excited kids, we were preparing for what was going to be an amazing week. The energy and enthusiasm of all the students were addictive and we loved it. The other coaches and I gathered in the Lodge 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 couple of rounds of activities.

The Giant Swing and the Flying Fox were the instant highlights, the Rock Wall was challenging, the Bush Challenge and the Laser Skirmish were epic, and our Inflatable City was just fun. There were many personal boundaries pushed and fears overcome, with too many kids pushing beyond what they first thought they were capable of.

After the first rotation, everyone gathered in the Lodge to further cement each of the group names they came up with using a flag and creating a chant they could create on their own. Each group was asked to create a name for themselves that was agreed upon by all, and these are the names they came up with:

Grp 1 - The Wonkas

Grp 2 - The Mountain Monkeys

Grp 3 - Rizzly Lions

Grp 4 - Grizzly Bears

Grp 5 - Alphas

Grp 6 - Demon Potatoes

After an evening party night on Wednesday, Thursday was kicked off with a morning Intentions chat from Kid President before getting straight into the next round of activities. The day turned out to be very cold, but everyone was so into the activities that after a while we couldn’t tell.

Just after lunch on Thursday we played a game called Magical Creatures, where each of the tribes had to venture out into the park and find an adult dressed up and escort them back to the stage for points. The students had as much fun as the teachers, but no one had as much fun as Ms. Creighton, who got it all on video!

Thursday afternoon we also embarked on our epic Monster Course, a mud run around the grounds of The Summit involving tyres, charades, mud, cargo nets, holey buckets, mud, a ball pit, and more mud! 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 Grizzly Bears!

Friday started with another chat from Kid President about Gratitude before bracing the cold and the rain for the last two rotations of activities.

After we wound up the last of our group challenges, 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 on the stage to say our thank yous to all the people involved in making this camp epic and read out the winners of the various activities, before taking our epic values winners for a surprise hot lap in our WW2 army tank as a congratulations for standing out in their respective groups.

Thank you so much to Stephanie, the parents, teachers and students from Drouin 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, Sunny, Jacob, Odile, Ant, and Liam