Newborough East PS Year 3/4 Camp Blog

When the buses rolled through the gates of The Summit on a very warm and wet Wednesday packed full of 80 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 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 - our very own goal-setting technique and getting into our first rounds of activities.

The Rock Wall and Tash’s Ladder were the instant highlights, the Cave was scary, the Bush Challenge and the Scavenger Hunt 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 Stadium to get out of the wild rain but also to further cement their identities by creating a flag with all their names on it along with some values that they would like to hold each other to. Each group was asked to come up with a name for themselves that was agreed upon by all, and here are the new group names:

Grp 1 - The Rizzly Quokkas

Grp 2 - The Daring Dingoes

Grp 3 - The Daring Devils

Grp 4 - The Crushing Crocodilians

Grp 5 - The Tigersnakes

Grp 6 - The Quokkas

After an evening movie night on Wednesday with The Lorax, 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 a little 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 barbecue shelter for points. The students had as much fun as the teachers!

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.

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 at the BBQ Shelter 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 presenting our epic Values winners with a Summit Survivor medallion as congratulations for standing out in their respective groups.

Thank you so much to Eliza, the parents, teachers and students of Newborough East 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, Zoe, Taylor, Sam, Hailey, Maddie, Ant and Liam