Mornington Secondary College Year 7 Camp Blog
On the stunning morning of Monday the 15th of May, the Summit welcomed back the year eight students and teachers of Bundoora Secondary.
Students were promptly shown to their cabin accommodation, where they would be staying for the next couple of days! After they got settled, they were welcomed into the lodge where coach SPINKs gave an introduction to camp and the coaches! Tim introduced Emily, Yves, Cheyenne, Sunny, Liam, Rohan, Timmy, Ella, Sam, Carlanee, and their team leader Spinks! Ella talked about The Summit’s very own recipe for the best camp ever, and the ingredients to that were the five keys of camp.
These five 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 activities hub and started with a game of 50 Ip. Then Sam and Yves taught everyone how to put on a helmet and harness, followed by Liam telling everyone an epic goal-setting strategy, our 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 camp were Laser Skirmish, Inflatables, Skybridge, Snowy River Challenge, Giant Swing, Rock-wall, the Summit Window, and Leap of Faith. This range of activities challenged people’s bravery, team spirit, support, trust creativity, and problem-solving skills (to name a few!)
Day one ended with introducing the students to a camp tradition called GMICs, which stands for “Great Moments in Camp” - this is all about writing down and acknowledging some of the awesome moments we’ve seen.
Day two started with an epic talk about setting a morning intention with Spinks, learning about how important it is to choose to focus on the things we can control. 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 Heads or Tails, before getting into the park and beginning the activity rotations.
After lunch students had one more activity to complete, to warm up before the Monster Course, we started dancing to three different songs: Nut-bush, Macarena, and Cotton Eye Joe where EVERYBODY got the opportunity to get up; dance, and get a bit silly. Finally, it was time to do the famous Monster Course with the added bonus of the rain (which made EVERYTHING more dramatic and fun). This was a feat of teamwork, strength, and resilience as students completed the course
As the last day rolled around Coach Spinks took the kids through a gratitude session, where the students were asked to think about who and or what makes them feel. Grateful to ‘check back in’ for the last two rotations of activities to go. The group game played was jockeys to warm the students up and as the final rotation 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)
On behalf of all of us here at The Summit, we would like to say a huge thank you! We wish you all the best with the rest of the year!
Spinks/ Sonic 😊
