Spotswood Primary School Blog
The cold and drizzly Autumn day of Wednesday the 28th of March wasn’t going to hold back the students of Spotswood Primary School, as the buses rolled in and they brought so much excitement and energy to The Summit Adventure Park!
Camp started off in the main dining area, called the Blue Room. Here the campers met their world-class coaching team and learned The Summit’s secret ingredients to an epic camp. These are the Five Keys, and they are:
Have Fun
Play All In
Make Lots of Mistakes
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Don’t Go Home Wondering What If
Equipped with the knowledge of how to get the most out of camp, campers burst out into the park where we played a game of 50 Up, which was done in order to help Jilly bounce her way into the Olympics. After that, students got into activity groups where they completed initiative challenges in order to help groups identify the key team values that would come in very handy over the next few days. Of course, once team values were uncovered, teams came up with some unique team names to represent them over camp. Teams came up with the following:
Team 1. Best Camping Potatoes
Team 2. The Puddle Masters
Team 3. The Butt Rollers
Team 4. The Minion Survivors
After the initiative challenge, teams came together to learn from coaches Sam and Mim how to put on a Helmet and Harness. Then Coach Ash taught us an epic goal-setting strategy to help us get the most out of every activity. This strategy was called Target, Stretch, and Super Stretch. To set a target is to set a goal on the edge of your comfort zone- something you know you can do, then a stretch - something you think you can do, and then setting a super stretch - something that seems impossible. This goal-setting strategy proved incredibly helpful for breaking down overwhelming tasks and achieving things that didn’t seem possible. The beauty of this strategy is that using it doesn’t have to end at camp, it can come in so useful in day-to-day life as well!
Campers put that knowledge and strategy to the test in their first two activities of the day that had them: soaring through the sky 144m across the lake on the Flying Fox, bouncing from wall to wall in Inflatable City, scaling a ladder high in the sky getting the best view of the Summit on Tash’s Ladder and putting thinking to the test navigating the park with the Orienteering challenges.
After a powerful kickstart to camp, Spotswood PS got introduced to a camp tradition called GMICs, which stands for Great Moments in Camp. This was all about writing down the greatest moments where we’ve seen teammates be brave and super supportive, and where they’ve unleashed their greatness.
There were many highlights from day one, that the coaches wanted to acknowledge. These were: Gem being a standout leader straight away cracking the code of the GoGo Stop initiative, Oliver being the absolute mastermind with riddles on Orienteering, Griffon navigating their team to victory on orienteering, Neil embracing key number 4. on the Flying Fox, Halley taking one step at a time to make it to the top of Tash’s Ladder, Laurence becoming the resident sound guy and always making sure the music was pumping loud around the park, Fox on the Flying Fox and Tyler being an absolute superstar helping out with the duty group.
Day two began with a delicious croissant breakfast and a talk on what it means to set up your day with a morning intention. We discussed how setting an intention is like setting a goal, or choosing how you want something to go. Setting a daily intention is all about doing that in the morning to choose how you want your day to go.
Fully prepared with some clear as-day, daily intentions, we ran down into the park! We met a new coach called Timmay and we all played a massive group game of Scissors, Paper, Rock, EVOLUTION! Lots of fun and got us all warmed up for the remaining two of the activities we started with. There was no lack of courage shown by the students of Spotswood, conquering activities, and super stretches left, right, and center.
After morning tea we started a whole new set of activity rotations. These activities included: balancing across the Sky Bridge, crawling through the pitch-black Cave, testing teamwork on the Bush Challenge, and using every last ounce of bravery on the Leap of Faith.
We had some notably delicious chicken tenders for lunch that gave us plenty of fuel for one more activity rotation and the Monster Course !!
The Monster Course was an epic obstacle course that was the ultimate test of cooperation and mindset. It had everyone stepping through water, using their minds, sliding around, and crawling through mud. Between each obstacle, teams had to link arms and share the weight of one car tire. After one epic lap, the news was shared that here at the Summit we determine the winner not by who does it fastest the first time, but by who improves the most in their second lap. All teams that competed made some phenomenal improvement times!
They are as follows:
9.33
6.16
7.58
5.17
Congratulations to group the Best Camping Potato’s for being the winners with an incredible improvement time!
Some highlights from day two were: Angus showing mega courage conquering the leap of faith, Jayden and Mali being absolute powerhouses lifting their team out of the foam pit from above, whilst Fox and Andy using their muscles to boost their team from below, Tilly shouting “I feel like Google maps!” as she went across the Flying Fox - because she could see everything, Gem from the Minion Survivors said “We’re going to steal the moon” when he was at the top of Tash’s Ladder, Finn was an absolute whizz on the memory game in Bush Challenge, Ruby showed her resilience on the Sky Bridge and Timtam had the best time doing the Monster Course with group Minion Survivors!
Day three started with another scrumptious breakfast and another talk to get us inspired for the day! On Friday we talked about gratitude and all the different ways we can show gratitude towards the team and the people around us. This was an awesome way to inspire you to dig deep on the last day and make the most of spending the last morning on camp.
To get warmed up on this final chilly morning of camp, we played a group game of ‘Huckle Buckle’ and then got into our final activities. Even though campers had absolutely pushed themselves to the limits over the past couple of days, there was no lack of enthusiasm to finish camp on a high note!
Activities ended with each team voting on their MVP of camp, voting for someone who had truly lived and breathed the Five Keys. As a special great big congratulations to values winners Zoe, Anja, Winter, and Gem, these legends got to drive around one hot lap in the Summit’s very own WW2 Army Tank!
On behalf of the coaches and everyone here at The Summit, we wanted to say a huge thank you to the students and teachers of Spotswood PS. You guys have truly stretched yourselves beyond your limits while always having all the fun and always being so supportive of one another, which was absolutely wonderful to see. All the coaches had the best time and we hope you all did too. Best of luck with the rest of 2023 and we hope to see you again!
From coaches
Sunny, Timtam, Mim, Sam and Ash!
Bush challenge results:
27.51
34.28
37.10
30.28
