Our alpine adventure to Mt Hutt Retreat

Kia ora koutou, 

Our year 4-6 Kōpara class went out to Mt Hutt Retreat during week 5. For a lot of our tamariki, it was their first time away from home and stepping outside of their comfort zones! Here are some of the things we got up to. 

Mr Scott didn't tell anybody what was happening until we arrived at the places for the entire camp! 

Firstly, we stopped into the Air Force museum for a private tour and photo challenge for our parent car groups of taking the most 'creative photo'. We looked at a massive variety of air force related planes, helicopters and equipment. It was a great warm up to start camp and get to know each other a little better. 

Next we went off for a sneaky visit to Clip & Climb while they were doing some preparations we had a climb and tested our fear of heights! 

Thirdly, we finally (to the relief and excitement of the tamariki) made our way to camp eating lunch on the way - it didn't take us long to settle in and get started on our first round of activities for camp! 

After that, we had a student picked dinner of Nachos with Ice cream / fruit salad for dessert as prepared by Krystal our amazing parent help.

After dinner, we were surprised with an amazing water slide over a beautiful sunset! Even the parents had a go! 

After this, we had our annual tissue olympics where we competed in several olympic events such as javelin, swimming, sprints and shotput in teams. The catch? Every event is done inside with a tissue being the centre of the activity. The team with the most amount of points wins. It was loud and exciting so afterwards we needed to catch our breath just before bed. 

Then at 10pm, it was time for bed. With our parents watching in to make sure we went to sleep and weren't talking... 

The next day, we awoke to an absolutely stunning autumn sunrise with breakfast around 8am. Than, we launched into the rest of our rotations all the way through till 4pm. We did things such as..

Abseiling...

Mountain biking...

Frisbee golf...

Air rifles...

Team challenges...

Low ropes course...

And finally, Archery...

During this we had wraps for lunch and a surprise visit from Mr Cavanagh who helpfully judged our creative photo contest and did a rigorous bunk inspection. 

Now it was time for dinner, where we all made our own pizzas. Again, assisted by Krystal, the amazing chef! 

After dinner, it was time for one last water slide

A bonfire and a movie before bed. A lot more tired faces this time! 

The next morning, we awoke to another stunning sunrise and moved on to tidying up the centre and our last rotation with all of the activities we didn't get a chance to do. 

We had an amazing, jam packed camp and there were so many proud moments from the tamariki, parents where we stepped outside of our comfort zones and really tried our hardest to complete activities which scared us. 

All of which wasn't possible without our amazing parents. Thank you so much for your help, support and kindness. We're lucky to have such amazing people in our midst - Chucky II, Kylie, Krystal, Amelia, Digger, Jason, Tim, & Kate.