Harkaway PS Year 6 Camp Blog

On the stunning morning of Monday, the 7th of August 2023, The Summit welcomed back the year 6 students and teachers of Harkaway Primary School.

Shown their Cabin accommodations, students got to see where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After they got settled into The Lodge, coach Spinks/Sonic gave an introduction to the camp and the coaches! Spinks introduced the epic coaches Adam and Logan. Spinks/Sonic then handed it over to Adam to give out The Summit’s very own recipe to the best camp ever, and the ingredients were the Five Keys of camp. These keys are:

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

Without further ado, we all headed down to the activities hub and started with a game of 50 Up. Then Logan taught everyone how to wear a helmet and harness, followed by telling everyone an epic goal-setting strategy to help us 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. Through collaboration and leadership, 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: Tash's Ladder, Cave, and Snowy River Challenge. The second lot of activities were Leap of Faith, Laser Skirmish, and Snake and Nails. These activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust, creativity, and problem-solving.

Day one ended in doing a Tribe Identity Challenge where teams had to come up with some unique team names and chants, which they then had to perform. They were working together to use their artistic ability to create a flag and a chant to represent them around camp! Campers were 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 extraordinary 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, 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 a tribe challenge of Shoe Bowling, followed by an epic game of Jockeys. Just before the famous Monster Course, the group performed at the YMCA to get their bodies moving. With the groups warmed up, it was time for the brief; off the groups went to take the Monster Course head-on. Using teamwork, strength, and resilience as students completed a huge first lap but were shocked to find out that the winning team wasn’t the fastest, but the team that improved the most on their SECOND LAP. With a halftime speech from Spinks/Sonic, the teams were off for round two, and all tribes improved.

As the last day rolled around, Coach Logan took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were taught about who and or what makes them feel grateful to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities.

The group game played was Huckle Buckle on the volleyball court to warm the students up, and as the final rotation came to a close, the students all voted for someone in their tribe who represented/embodied the Five Keys the most throughout camp. (These are listed below, along with the results)

On behalf of The Summit, we would like to once again say a big thank you to you all for playing all in and making sure you found all the fun! All the best for the rest of the year!

Spinks/Sonic, Adam, Logan