Deer Park West Primary School Blog
On the bright and sunny August 22nd, The Summit welcomed 91 legends from Deer Park West Primary School to the adventure park!
After the buses dropped off the excited group, they all got settled into their new homes for the next three days.
The year fours dived into the Lodge, where they promptly met their epic team of coaches through a runway display like no other..! After finding out some fun facts about their leaders, students were asked the question: “what do you want to get out of camp?” Responses varied from wanting to have fun, to spending time with mates, to even wanting to hold a snake! At this point, the room was buzzing with excitement, but before heading out into the park, the Deer Park West group learnt about the Five Keys of camp which were sure to help turn the next three days from good to fantastic! These Five Keys were:
Don’t Go Home Wondering What If
Play All In
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Make Lots of Mistakes
Have Fun!
Without further ado, the action began with a quick game then it was straight into it! Teams started with an initiative challenge where they got the chance to work together to solve a puzzle. Through this challenge, we learnt all about what communication and cooperation really meant!
Then it was onto some more awesome activities. The activities at The Summit varied from challenges that had students facing fears, to challenges that involved a lot of team collaboration. These activities included: using map reading skills in Orienteering, competing for points using creativity with Scavenger Hunt, scaling the big tower to see an incredible view on Tash’s Ladder, using bravery and courage to walk across a bed of nails - and got introduced to The Summit’s resident gentle giant at Snakes and Nails, really learn about collaboration to find solutions on Initiatives, climb to high heights with the support of the team on Rockwall, and last but not least, put artistic skills to the test creating incredible team flags!
Some of these activities were quite challenging, so to help us conquer key number 3-Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable, coach Spag taught the groups all about an amazing goal-setting strategy we love to use here, called: Target, Stretch and Super Stretch. We found this strategy really helped break tasks down into more manageable sizes, especially when faced with incredible feats!
At the end of day one, all is said and done! The day finished with a surprise storm that kept us on our toes!
Day two rolled around quicker than we thought! The day started off nice and sunny, which was an epic way to set up our day! We began by learning all about what it meant to set an intention. A couple of people shared their intentions of how they wanted to show up for the day, and we had some inspiring answers! Some people said they wanted to show integrity and respect, and others said they wanted to support their team and dance lots and lots!
After we had decided what sort of people we wanted to be, we all went out into the park to play a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, CHANT! Congratulations to Killian and Mahdi for being the winners!
Here at The Summit, we run activities rain, hail, or shine, and we proved that on Tuesday as we experienced all three! Excitement was all around, despite the weather, and anticipation was building for the epic Monster Challenge! We warmed up for that with a bonzer game of GIANTS, WIZARDS, and ELVES, where we started to get a sense of what it meant to slip and slide in the mud!
The Monster Course was an enormous trial of teamwork, determination, and cooperation as all the teams had to work together to complete a set of obstacles set up all over camp! After an extravagant first lap, the team’s true spirit and resilience were shown as it sprung upon them that here at The Summit, we don’t really care about which team is the fastest the first time, but the winning team would actually be the team that works together the most to improve on their second lap. A remarkable effort was shown all around as teams had some incredible improvement times! These times were as follows:
Monster Course improvement times:
Team Bright Sparks - 11.25
Team Whizz Kidz - 7.35
Team Sandrie’s Stars - 9.14
Team Genius Gems - 8.38
Team Clever Cookies - 7.24
Team Brainiac’s - 9.30
Team Smartie Pants - 9.10
All teams did amazing to improve so much, as well as a big Congratulations to team Bright Sparks for coming in first place with a whopping improvement time of 11.25!!
On the final morning, campers were still bursting with energy and excitement for the last two activities despite feeling a little tired after a big two days! We started Wednesday off by learning about gratitude and painting an imaginary picture of everything we’re grateful for. Some of the things we mentioned that we painted in our pictures and are especially grateful for are the houses that give us shelter, the food we get to have and our pets that are always so excited to see us. We discovered that when we start our days by thinking about all the wonderful things, we’re grateful for, our days go from good to awesome!
The teams smashed out their final two activities and finished camp on a high when we all did some reflections on the highlights from the camp experience.
At the end of their last activity, campers got to vote for someone in their team that really embodied the Five Keys of camp. Then we finished on a high note by saying some final thank you's and then getting to watch the voted values winners go for a ride in the army tank!! How awesome!
Congratulations to the values winners Leni, Joud, Sally, MJ, Sana, Ella and Leo!
The results for the Scavenger Hunt Challenge are:
Team Bright Sparks - 455
Team Whizz Kidz - 385
Team Sandrie’s Stars - 555
Team Genius Gems - 305
Team Clever Cookies - 465
Team Brainiac’s - 385
Team Smartie Pants - 505
A massive congratulations to everyone for trying their hardest and doing so well over the camp! A big thank you from the coaches for all the energy, joy, and laughter that you brought! Another big thank you to the teachers that made it all happen.
All the best for the rest of 2022!
From coaches,
Sunny, Spag, Sarah, Sam, Rohan, Marcus
P.S. speaking of joy and laughter, here are the team’s epic chant creations!
Smartie Pants Smartie Pants,
We love to Dance
Smartie Pants, Smartie Pants
We work like Ants
Smartie Pants, Smartie Pants
All hands in
Smartie Pants Smartie Pants
We’re gonna Win!
Bright Sparks, Bright Sparks
We light the way!
Bright Sparks, Bright Sparks
Listen to what we say!
Bright Sparks, Bright Sparks
Watch us SLAY
Whizz Kids, Whizz kids,
We’ll be winning!
Whizz Kids, Whizz kids,
Leave you spinning!
Whizz kids, Whizz Kids,
Always Grinning!
Sandri Stars, Sandri Stars,
Reaching up above to Mars!
Sandri Stars, Sandri Stars,
Totally awesome like monster cars!
Sandri Stars, Sandri Stars,
Absolute winning STARS!
Genius Gems,
Let’s go!
Genius Gems,
Put on a show!
Genius Gems,
We’re not slow,
Genius Gems
GO GO GO!
We are the Clever Cookies,
Unbothered by the weather!
We are the Clever Cookies,
Love to work together!
We are the Clever Cookies,
RESILIENT FOREVER!
Brainiacs Brainiacs,
We are maniacs!
Brainiacs Brainiacs
We always bounce back!
Brainiacs, Brainiacs,
Out for Attack!
Brainiacs, Brainiacs,
Absolute INSANIACS!!
