Peninsular Special Development School Camp Blog
The students and staff from the Peninsular Special Development School arrived on the 9th of November - not only had the day brought along some incredible people but also some incredible weather and we were so lucky to have the same gorgeous sunshine throughout your time with us at camp! As soon as you all got off the bus, we knew we were going to have the most magical week. When you arrived you got some time to get settled in the blue and then it was into some introductions. Sarah and Rohan had the amazing opportunity to meet you all shortly after you unpacked and Rohan then introduced you to five epic things - our Five Keys! After you learned about how to set some awesome goals, we challenged you to use the five keys while you were in the park. You all rose to the occasion and it was so cool to watch!
The Summit's Five Keys:
Have Fun
Play All In
Make Lots of Mistakes
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Don’t Go Home Wondering What If
After all our introductions we hit the park and jumped into our activities, it was amazing to watch you all already pushing your boundaries! We had made the coolest decision to keep you all in one big activity group and boy did it make for the best week! We had so much fun over the three days and Sarah and Rohan are so very proud of every single one of you! The first thing we did was a bunch of different initiatives, we started with Tiles where you all got super creative in ways of finishing the activity and we identified that we would like to work on our communication as a team, so off we went to GoGo Stop to put that into effect! We ended up getting to the end of the activity and Jacob got to wear the sombrero! Our last initiative was pot stack and we did so well, throughout the three initiatives there were some incredible examples of leadership but Codey and Lochie truly took the cake, well done boys! We all learnt so much from the initiatives and we were ready to start the bigger activities, our first one was snake and nails! We all begun truly pushing ourselves and it was incredible to watch you all, just like Tyson had done to come up and touch Mitch! Even if we weren’t keen on the activity we still considered it, which pushed us sometimes to give it a go! Snake and nails was an epic activity to start on because it was a step towards the bigger activities, it helped us set goals and get comfortable with that uncomfortable feeling we may have had when approaching some activities.
On Thursday, you were completing Cave, Tash’s Ladder, Flying Fox and Laser Tag. First and foremost we started with a session about intentions, we all got to set a goal we wanted to achieve throughout the day and a lot of us said we wanted to have fun so we started our day with an epic game of pirates and a moo off! from there we hiked it over to the Cave, you were sent in one at a time through absolute darkness, we’d like to give a quick shout out to Will who didn’t want to go through, but with the help of Ryan made it to the end! after a debrief with Rohan, we moved to Tash’s Ladder, we learnt a really epic trick on Tash’s - if we began to feel nervous, we started getting those butterfly feelings we agreed we’d try two more rungs before then coming down the ladder. it was an awesome tool we had to help us push ourselves a little bit more without having to do what we don’t necessarily want to do just yet, it really helped later on. Tash’s was the first activity that really pushed us, so many of us were nervous coming up the tower and still gave Tash’s a go, it was so cool! Our next activity was Flying Fox, we were all super excited for Fox and some of us were still expanding our comfort zones by getting uncomfortable - Misty especially pushed herself, it was amazing to watch you Misty go across the Flying Fox after being nervous! Shout out to Ryan for catching you all - it’s not an easy job, and to all your teachers who helped with your harnesses, which is also not an easy job. Thank you for your help! Throughout our debriefs during the day we reflected on why we were doing these activities and what we were learning. A lot of you said we were doing these activities to face our fears, to push ourselves and also to get around each other if we were ever feeling a little nervous. And with all that epic information under our belt we went to lunch. Right after lunch we had an intense battle on the Laser Tag field, finishing it with an endgame teacher-student battle! The students took the win, but only by a couple of deaths, it was so fun to watch you all running around, having a fun time and being able to break up the more intense activities with some chill Laser games. Whilst we were doing Laser Tag, Rohan, Ryan and Ryan had taken Connor for a Monster Course lap before he had to head home - Connor you looked like so muddy, we hope the Monster Course was everything you had hoped it was! Shortly after our games had finished it was our turn to hit the Monster Course! We got absolutely filthy, we had so much fun and we had the most amazing mud fight ever! We got an awesome time for our lap but then Rohan had broken it to us that throughout all of camp we were pushing you to be incredible humans, so off we went again! We did a second lap and it was so epic, we pushed our boundaries yet again, in probably the biggest way we ever could! we worked incredibly as a team, we improved on our time, we worked out how could be a little faster in places but above all we looked out for and supported each other the best we could! We had improved on our time by a whole 13 minutes and 23 seconds, that’s incredible!!! Sarah and Rohan are beyond proud of you all, we hope you remember the lessons you had learnt whilst at camp for a long, long time!
On Friday we had two last activities: Highwire and Giant Swing! Giant Swing was definitely the activity majority of us were looking forward to for the last three days. However we started with Highwire where we got the opportunity to complete the activity in pairs. This activity can easily be one of our activities that creates this uncomfortable feelings but you all crushed it - Callum especially did an incredible job, he didn’t want to go to the top but pushed through the last two steps and made it to the wire! Tiahna as well had pushed herself to get to the top of the ladder, Taf had also pushed himself to his limits as well! It was such a treat to watch you all push yourselves even whilst you were a little nervous, because that’s what unleashing your greatness is, right? Then we made our way over to the Giant Swing! What an awesome way to finish the three days! There were so many people who were keen to go to the top, some of you even keen to put blindfolds on which was so cool to watch! Some of us also pushed ourselves and went to red or yellow even though we were uncomfortable with the heights! That was so cool to watch and we are all so proud of you for getting comfortable being uncomfortable. We finished at the Giant Swing with a quick shout out where we had gone around the circle to vote for the two people we felt had pushed themselves and stuck to the five keys the most. After the shout outs, Codey and Callum had been voted for the most because they had tried things they didn’t think they were going to try, they pushed themselves and at times were wonderful team leaders. Well done guys! Sarah and Rohan are so grateful they got to be a part of your journey at The Summit, we hope you had the best time.
What an epic way to spend three days! Thank you so much for joining us on such an epic journey, you’re all such inspiring people! Well done using the 5 keys and the Target, Stretch, Super Stretch model to the best of your abilities! We’re also so excited that you got around the GMIC’s, we hope you continue using them! Keep pushing yourselves! All the love,
Sarah and Rohan
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