Pakenham Springs Primary School Camp Blog

On a very eagerly anticipated Wednesday morning the Pakenham Springs crew rolled into The Summit to kick off what turned out to be an amazing few days of camp. At least that is what we were hoping for before a number of students decided to test out their Parkour skills and come up with injuries before we had even started! Once all was in readiness and the staff and I had introduced ourselves and our Five Keys to a great camp of, Have Fun, Play All In, Make Lots of Mistakes, Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable, and Don’t Go Home Wondering What If, we headed down into the park.

First up we played a couple of games and then got into the activities, those being our Leap of Faith, High Wire, Laser Skirmish, Tash’s Ladder, Orienteering, Scavenger Hunt, Cave, and Snowy River Challenge.

The students were asked to come up with a group name they wanted to be known as for the remainder of camp, and they didn't disappoint!

Group 1 The Monkey Kingdom

Group 2 The Mud Dogs

Group 3 Purple 4 Life

Group 4 Blueberries

Group 5 Monkeys

Group 6 OLOY

Group 7 The Sassy Squad

Group 8 The Redbacks

The energy was high and it was fantastic to see some real breakthroughs of courage, creativity, and teamwork right through camp. Everyone embraced the chaos of our Scavenger Hunt and the Snowy River Wombat Hole to the highs of Tash’s epic ladder, the fear-inducing darkness of the Cave to the dizzying heights of the Leap of Faith and High Wire. Laser Skirmish was a hit, as was the chance to explore the camp on the Orienteering.

On Wednesday morning we were treated to our highlight of the whole camp, a phenomenal rendition of Barbie Girl before our morning intentions and our next rounds of activities. We then ran our epic Monster Course, our mud run through a number of physical activities that got everyone, including the coaches and teachers, wet, muddy, and exhausted. The water proved very cold and difficult to battle through towards the end of our second lap, with Mud Dogs struggling the most, but it was so inspiring to see everyone push through to the very end.

On Thursday after we completed our final rounds of activities we asked each group to vote on their tribe's Values winner, or the person they felt committed most to our 5 Keys. We then wrapped up the day with some thank you’s and read out the times and revealed the winners from each group before we were able to reward all our Values winners with an epic ride in our Army Tank. We then sadly said our goodbyes as the kids boarded the buses.

The times and scores for the activities and the values winners were:

Thank you all again from Myself, Liam, Spinks, Shanara, Rohan, Sam, Lina, Emily, Marcus, and Sophie, and we can't wait to see the Pakenham Springs students back again soon.

Adam

The Summit