Last week, in week 6, the annual Year 9 STARS camp took place!

For two days, Year 9 whānau classes and their STARS Mentors, spent a night in Anakiwa, Outward Bound, learning all about our school values|uara through engaging and very entertaining activities, like Rafting, Fire Lighting, Rogaine, and Team Building. At the end of the night, each whānau class put on a ‘camp show’ ranging from made up songs and dances to little skits. The days strengthened the Mentors' connections with their mentees while teaching them about values, resilience, bravery and communication.

Here are a couple year 9 students takes on the activities:

Rafting Activity - Libby Pitts

Rafting was really fun because we got to choose our teams and how confident we were. We got to build our own raft and our own design by listening to others' ideas.

It was really funny when people slipped off the raft because they lost their balance and everyone had to cooperate with each other to make the raft move and go to the jetty.

Even though it was a cold morning and we all didn't want to go in the water, most of us ended up falling in and jumping off the jetty and having fun.

Manaakitanga Activity - Molly Macri

We started by walking out into the forest. Gorgeous, tall trees surrounded us. We were led to a little work out area where there was a weight lifting bench and some old rope swings that are usually used for the Outward Bound courses. Once there, we had a small briefing before we got into the activities.

After the briefing, we worked on Manaakitanga, which is expressing kindness and respect for others. Our instructor used a really cool example of how we build up stress from school, maybe family/problems at home, work, etc. In each class there would’ve been a different volunteer but in the 9CURO whānau class I was chosen. The leader handed me one 5 kg plate from near the weight lifting bench and said, “This is stress from school.” She then put another plate on top of the other and said, “This is stress from work.” Then she placed another. And another, each representing examples of stress. She asked me to go walk around a cone (with 25KG’s of plates in my hand) and I couldn’t take it. It was too heavy and the cone was far away. That was her way of showing us that it’s okay to let it out. It’s okay to talk to someone and better to do that than build it all up inside yourself.

While at the same place, we also did some team activities. For the next activity we worked in three’s where one person had a blindfold on and had to be directed by the other two to pick up some cones. One person stood with their back to the blind person and had to shout directions to the blind person based on the directions of the third person who could see the blind person, but couldn’t talk (had to use hand movements to communicate; quite confusing I know!). It was a bit hard but it was really fun. This activity showed us the importance of communication, participation, and that we all play a part in each other’s journey.

Rogaine - Emma Anderson

The rogaine was an entertaining team-building experience. We 'cracked up' when the instructor handed us these bright yellow rubbish bags to throw over one of our mates and we had to write what our ultimate team mate would look like, stuff like "good team player" on them. It was awesome to think about what makes a good team player while we took on the course together. We tackled tons of cool challenges and checkpoints where we had to do fun stuff as a team, like using mats to get across the “river”, doing a hundred pushups together, getting creative with face paint, and even using chopsticks to fish milk bottles out of buckets. My highlight? Definitely just being with my group, facing challenges, and laughing our heads off the whole way through. It was a total blast!

Fire Lighting - Brooke Goodsir

We had fire lighting on the first day and it was awesome. We were given a bag full of safety equipment, tools and wood. We first had to learn how to use a Flint & Steel. Then once we had learnt to use that we started trying to light cotton balls on fire by spreading them apart to get more oxygen flowing through to help ignite it easier. After a while, everyone got the hang of it and managed to light one and put it out. Then we got in groups and used 3 pieces of wood and a piece of rope to turn one piece of wood to create an ember to light some hay on fire! My team struggled as we tried and tried knowing that all the other teams had lit 3 pieces of hay on fire and we still couldn't even get an ember… we soon changed our wood and got an ember first try, what a mission. Fire Lighting was awesome and it was great to learn all about the three main parts to a fire. Thank you

Stars camp could not have happened without the financial support of Marlborough Lines who have sponsored us for the last five years. This means that the Stars Camp is free for all the Year 9 students. What an incredible support from our local lines company.

Also, thank you to all the Stars mentors, Gemma Miller, whānau teachers, Graeme Dingle Foundation’s staff and instructors who made this the most incredible experience for the year 9’s. A huge thankyou to Outward Bound for letting us use their spectacular facility.