Guthridge Primary School Camp Blog
It's been an absolutely awesome three days with the year six students and teachers from Guthridge Primary School! The Summit welcomed the crew in on the very cold and rainy Monday the 21st of November. Even though Summer was nine days away, you wouldn’t have been able to tell with the freezing cold 8-degree temperatures! However, the cold climate and wet weather didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits, as we were buzzing and excited to begin activities! The year sixes were split into three groups and came up with some epic team names:
CROCODILE SLAYERS
THE GOATS
WOMBAT CREW
Before activities began, the groups learned about the Five Keys of camp which were guaranteed to help them get the most out of camp. Students were challenged to embody the keys: 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
The first set of activities had campers climbing 20m in the air and seeing the best view of Gippsland at the Summit Window, working together on teamwork and collaboration with the Snowy River Challenge, and battling it out with imagination and strategy playing Laser Skirmish.
After we’d spent some time together in our team, it was time to create some colourful team flags to represent us! We put our artistic skills to the test as we designed and colored in some flags to wave around camp, and some victory team chants to inspire us.
The Croc Slayers came up with:
WE ARE THE CROC SLAYERS,
NOT HERE TO PLAY!
WE ARE THE CROC SLAYERS,
THE OTHER TEAMS WILL PAY!
WE ARE THE CROC SLAYERS,
SLAY ALL DAY!
The Goats came up with:
GO GO Goats
we are the Goats
Mighty Mighty Goats
GREATEST OF ALL TIME
LET'S GO GOATS!
The Wombat crew came up with this:
We are The Wombats
proud and strong is who we are
Wombat Wombat Wombat crew
Wombats here and Wombats far
We’re the Wombats through and through
We’re the camp’s greatest crew
We don’t lie around all-day
We’ll try the challenge anyway
3..2..1 WOMBAT CREW!
With day one up and done, campers learned about a camp tradition we have here, called GMICs, this is all about recognizing the Great Moments In Camp we have. Teammates are encouraged to write down a courageous, kind, and awesome moment they’ve seen throughout camp, and then it will get read out and acknowledged!
Day two started out with learning more about what it means to set a daily intention and that the words we say lead to the choices we make, and how we can choose exactly how we want our day to go. Campers set some awesome daily intentions, some that were shared were to: have all the fun, get muddy, and get comfortable being uncomfortable!
Even though it was another cold and rainy day, there were absolutely no complaints as we got straight into the action. To get nice and warm we started with a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Chant! Then got straight into activities!
Some of the activities we had at camp may have seemed wild and unimaginable and maybe even impossible to do, but to help us break down these activities, campers learned a goal-setting strategy to help them along the way. This is called setting a Target, Stretch and Super Stretch! Setting a target is setting one thing you know for sure you can do, something that’s on the edge of your comfort zone. Setting a stretch is about setting a goal that’s a little bit further outside your comfort zone. Then setting a super stretch is about setting a goal that is something epic that would be incredible to achieve, but seems very unlikely if not impossible! By breaking tasks down into these manageable pieces, campers were able to do extraordinary things!
After the last two rotations, we started a whole new bunch of activities! These new three were: bouncing around in the Inflatable City, flying across camp on the Flying Fox and using a heap of courage leaping off a building in the Leap of Faith! Group Goats even got to use creativity to compete in a bonus Scavenger Hunt challenge, where they got an impressive score of 360.
Goals were being kicked left, right and Center! By the time lunchtime rolled around, campers had worked up quite the appetite!
After lunch to get set and in the competition mindset, campers played a group game of Jockeys, where they jumped, ran, crawled, and piggybacked, and then the finalists made some epic poses too!
Before the Monster Course began, teams united and shouted their team chants, echoing throughout the park!
Without further ado, campers embarked on the Monster Course mud run challenge! This saw campers working as a team, running, completing mental and physical challenges, and getting wet and muddy, all while linking arms and carrying a car tire!! Once one spectacular lap was complete, the secret was spilled that here at The Summit we don’t really care about which team completes the course the first time the fastest, but we really care about which team bands together the most to get the largest improvement time. All teams showed phenomenal resilience, strength, and determination and have so much to be proud of! Congratulations to everyone, all teams improved by so much! The winning team is the Croc Slayers for improving by a whopping 11:28!
Even though campers were exhausted by a massive two days, they dug deep to finish day three on a high note! Day three started with reading some epic GMICs and talking about gratitude. We named a whole bunch of things to be grateful for, and this helped inspired us to smash out the last two activities.
At the end of the second rotation, each group voted for an MVP, someone who really embodied the Five Keys of camp. Congratulations to Shannon, Danae and Andy! They got to hold onto and become official guardians of their team’s flag!
Campers finished on a high note reflecting on some favorite moments of camp and learning some long-awaited results! Campers said some of their favourite bits were the Monster Course, getting to work as a team, Laser Skirmish, the food, Summit Window, and the talent show!
Some accomplishments and acknowledgments the coaches wanted to share: Andy on the Snowy River Challenges, Lilly pushing her comfort zone on the heights challenges, Kai’s epic leadership on the Monster Course, Parker always supporting his teammates and helping put on their harnesses, Josiah stylishly tearing up the laser tag arena like John Wick, Taneesha excitedly flying across the Flying Fox, Shannon always being there to help the team, Harry’s absolute abundance of fun facts we loved to hear, Ruth the catching extraordinaire on the Flying Fox and Marcus slipping and sliding in the mud in laser! We could go on and on, but on behalf of the team at The Summit, we would like to thank the legends from Guthridge Primary School for such a fantastic couple of days.
We wish you all the best for the rest of 2022 and a happy start to 2023!
From coaches
Ash, Lina, and Sunny!
Snowy River Challenge times are:
Group 1 - 35:03
Group 2 - 34:59
Group 3 - 31:19
