On the stunning afternoon of Monday 24th March 2025, The Summit welcomed the year 6 students and teachers of Wales Street Primary. Students were promptly shown to their accommodation, where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After settling, they were welcomed into the Stadium, where coach SPINKS introduced the camp and the coaches, Adam, Enis, Taylor, Lainie and Matt! We then informed the students about the Summit’s very own recipe for the best camp ever, and the ingredients to that were the Five Keys of camp.
These keys are:
- Have Fun
- Play All In
- Make Lots of Mistakes
- Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
- Don’t Go Home Wondering “What If”
Without further ado, we all head down to the BBQ shelter for a game of 50 Up. Matt and Taylor taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Matt telling everyone an epic goal-setting strategy called Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch that would help us to 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. This tested teamwork and leadership, but teams rose to the challenge! Then, we moved on to our first activity rotation. The activities that campers got to do at the camp Leap of Faith, Inflatables, Tash’s Ladder, Bush Challenge, Flying Fox and Scavenger Hunt. This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust, creativity and problem-solving (to name a few!).
Day one ended with Tribe Identity where the groups created their very own flag and carry them for the rest of camp. For end of day wrap up the students 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 incredible moments we’ve seen.
Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intentions with Adam, learning the importance of setting an intention and with the help of a video from Kid President ’20 Things to Say More Often’. Asking the students to think about who they wanted to be and how they wanted to show up for themselves, others and, of course, the activities. We then played a quick game of Pirates before getting into the park and beginning the three activity rotations.
After lunch, students had made their way down to the BBQ shelter to be briefed for the Monster Course and then did a warmup game called Big Star Little Star run by Spinks. FINALLY, it was time to do the famous Monster Course; this was a feat of teamwork, strength and resilience. As students completed the course, the groups were unaware they were running two laps of the Monster Course, so they got themselves together and then got the second lap done! The winner of the run was the team that had the biggest improvement time from their first lap. All teams improved by 5 minutes or more, well done! To end the day, they groups got to go on the waterslide together to cool down!
As the last day rolled around heaps of GMICs were read out , then Spinks took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were asked to think about who and what they are grateful for, to not go home wondering ‘what if’ and to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. Heading down to the BBQ shelter for a game called ‘Crane, Tiger, Egg’, to warm the students up and as the final two rotations came to a close the students were asked to vote for someone in their tribe who represented/embodied the Five Keys the most throughout camp. (These are listed below along with the results), they were then presented with Summit Medals and their tribe flags.
