East Bentleigh PS Year 6 Camp Blog

On the stunning Monday afternoon of 29th April 2024, The Summit welcomed the year 6 students and teachers of East Bentleigh Primary School. Students were promptly shown to their accommodation, where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After they got settled, they were welcomed into the Lodge where coach Spinks gave an introduction to camp and the coaches! Sam (big fish) informed the students about The Summit’s very own recipe to the best camp ever, and the ingredients to that were the Five Keys of camp.

These keys are:

1. Have Fun

2. Play All In

3. Make Lots of Mistakes

4. Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

5. Don’t Go home Wondering What If

Without further ado, we all headed down to the stage and started with a game of 50 Up run by Aron. Then Odile and Calarnee taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Zoe telling everyone an epic goal-setting strategy called Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch 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, Tash’s Ladder, Rockwall, Bush Challenge, Inflatables, Flying Fox and Cave. This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust, creativity and problem-solving (to name a few!) Day one ended with introducing the students 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 with Spinks, learning about how important it is to choose and to focus on the things we can not control, mainly the weather and people.  Asking the students to think about who they wanted to be and how the wanted to show up for; themselves, others and of course the activities. They played a game of Jockeys, before getting into the park and beginning the three activity rotations.

After lunch, students did a warm-up exercise called Big Star, Little Star, and then it was time to do the famous Monster Course. This was a feat of teamwork, strength and resilience.  As students completed the course, the groups were unaware of the fact that they were running two laps of the monster course, so they got themselves together and then got the second lap done! The winner of the run was the team that had the biggest improvement time from their first lap. All teams improved by 8 minutes or more.

 As the last day rolled around, heaps of GMICs were read out, and then Sam took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were asked to think about who and what they are grateful for, to not go home wondering ‘what if’ and to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. Heading down to the Lodge, for a game of Pirates run by Calarnee 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. As a reward for the Values winners, they got to take a spin in The Summit's very own army tank, while their peers watched and cheered them on. (These are listed below along with the results).

Thanks again for coming to camp and joining us in having all the fun; all the best for the rest of the year.

Spinks, Zoe, Sam, Calarnee, Odile, Jakob, and Aron.