Peninsula Grammar Year 7 Blog

On the 27th of March, we at The Summit were lucky enough to be a part of yet another Peninsula camp! This year brought its own challenges and highlights, but above all this year brought us such an incredible bunch of year 7’s – we had the best time getting to know you all.

On Monday you all arrived at The Summit and you were introduced to your coaches that would help you reach awesome super stretches throughout the rest of the week. These coaches were: Logan, Emily, Lina, Yves, Mim, Spinks, Zoe, Sunny, Adam, Sarah, Timmay, and Ash – your fearless team leader! You got to meet Ella and Shan halfway through the week as well and they were so keen to work with you all! After you met them, you were introduced to our Five Keys that helped you push yourselves and have an epic journey during your time at 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

We hope you can use these in your day-to-day life out in the real world! Suddenly it was time to jump into our first activities! We started with two initiatives that threw you into the deep end in terms of teamwork and setting goals on what we wanted to work on in our individual groups. After those activities, we had our group names! From here on out you were known as:

1. Donald Ducks

2. Apes

3. Benny Bananas

4. Barbie-Q Nuggets

5. Sussy Bukas

6. Coat Hangers

7. Just Butter

8. Just Win

9. Oscar and the Others

10. Yummy Noodles

11. Ginger Ninjas

12. Bin Chickens

After we finished our initiatives it was off to create our team flags and chants and they were stunning! That was the end of day one! That night groups 1-3 went off to the Trangia campout night, and everybody else got to do Ballistic Trivia with Ash and Logan.

Day two was intense! We started with a big game of Pirates and then we heard from Timmay, who took us through how to put a harness and helmet on, and then Logan shared with us an epic way to break things down into three steps, and how to set really cool goals. The way we did this was with something called ‘Target, Stretch and Super Stretch’. Logan told us that a target was something we knew we could definitely do, a stretch was something we could do if we pushed ourselves and a super stretch was something we thought was impossible, the thing we were avoiding. With this in our toolbox of strategies, we headed off to the activities we’d be focusing on for the next four days. You would’ve gotten to try these activities at some point during the week, we were rotating through:

· Abseiling

· Flying Fox

· Giant Swing

· Cave

· Bush Challenge

· High Wire

· Leap of Faith

· Snake and Nails

· Summit Window

· Snowy River Challenge

· Laser Skirmish

· Rock Wall

As you walked over to the activities, you may not have realized the meaning behind them or the reason why we were doing them other than fun. It wasn’t until we sat down in our debriefs and spoke about our experiences and how we could relate them back to the real world that we see the lessons. We had some really cool conversations happening, especially on Thursday, when you really started to connect the dots on how we could improve our teamwork and you started to realize your own growth over the last three days. You got to try four activities before the coaches brought you all to the stage and talked you through an epic rotation of games that could earn your team points which would be put towards the ‘Tribe Challenge Winners’, the games you got to play were:

· Gaga

· Dodgeball

· Mosquitos (not for points)

· 2 Ball Knockout

· Volleyball

· Fruit Salad (not for points)

You got to experience your first three games before we wrapped up day number two! That night you got to play an awesome round of Minute to Win it while groups 4-6 got to experience their own campout.

Day three was super similar to day two, still as intense, but still just as fun! In fact, you did your activities for the day – another four and then you got to experience the other three activities you hadn’t tried for the tribe challenge points. In fact, the only differences were the game in the morning and the evening activity after the program had finished. Wednesday morning we played Jockeys! There were some epic poses and everyone played all in, it was the coolest thing to watch! After the program, you got to play War Games with our coaches and we hope you had the greatest time! While all of this was occurring groups 7 – 9 got to experience the campout.

On Thursday, you were completing some of the activities you hadn’t tried yet and after you got to try those activities it was time for an epic, long-awaited Monster Course! We got absolutely filthy, we had so much fun and we pushed ourselves as hard as we could! We got an awesome time for our first lap, but then your coaches had broken it to you that throughout all of camp, we were pushing you to be incredible humans and doing things you never thought you could’ve done before, so off we went again! We did a second lap and it was so epic, we pushed our boundaries yet again, is probably the biggest way we ever could! We worked incredibly as a team, we worked out how we could be a little faster in places but above all, we looked out for and supported each other the best we could and the results were awesome! If you’d like to see how your team is shaped up, please check the table below that has a few other results included as well!

Congratulations legends. All very well deserved

MONSTER COURSE

On Friday it dawned on us that we would have to say goodbye, so after listening to Tim on Tuesday, Adam on Wednesday, and Sarah the day before, speaking about intentions or gratitude, Logan jumped in front of you all and spoke to you about how you can take the recourses home and tied it all up in a nice bow for you. If you’d like to give it a try please use the strategies in your own lives and see what happens! You got to play a big group game of Huckle Buckle which ended with an epic piggyback race, then it was on to one last epic activity and we finished with probably the most fun game we as coaches have played in a very long time – you had to catch a mythical creature! Unfortunately, then it came time to say goodbye. Your values winners got the incredible opportunity of riding in our World War 2 army tank after being nominated by their groups for sticking to our Five Keys the most over camp – you should be immensely proud of yourselves! Then it was time for our last goodbyes and you were on the bus.

Values Winners:

When your school comes it’s one of the biggest weeks your teachers and The Summit go through every year, but every year you all bring the most incredible attitudes and you push yourselves just as hard as we work, to make your camp epic! We are so beyond grateful for how hard you tried, how much growth you experienced, and how much fun we all had during your week-long camp. Continue being incredible humans, don’t forget the lessons you learned, and keep pushing your comfort zone, you’re all going to do some incredible stuff when you get back to school!

Thank you so much,

Your family in blue – The Summit.