Our local camp this year had a focus on wellbeing, in particular the mind, body, and soul. This meant every day we had an activity that would challenge our students and tick off the three areas of wellbeing.

Our first day saw us making the most of the beautiful Dunedin weather and head to St Kilda beach. We started with some team building games at school, and then walked along the beach to the Dinosaur Park. We had some food and did a clean up around the park, making sure there was no rubbish lying around affecting our environment. That afternoon we had a sand sculpture competition, which saw castles, turtles, mermaids, and more. On our way back to school we stopped at the Night & Day dairy and made the most of $1 ice-creams! The staff there served us 17 ice-creams in a record time!

Our second day was arguably the most exciting for many – we started with some Zumba from Mrs Brown and then all caught the public bus to the Octagon, where we went to Escape Artists. They have four rooms so there were four teams competing to get finished and ‘escape’ first. The scary motel group only took 49 minutes! The longest group was 77 minutes. That afternoon we returned to school and did some gardening. We did pretty little flower pots and herb seedlings to take home, and helped clean up an area of the school gardens.

The third day saw a lot of walking again – but this time it was doing the Street Art tour around Vogel Street. The end of the walk happened to pass Mama’s Donuts, where we popped in and ordered a donut for everyone. YUMMM!!!!! We then returned to school to make elderflower cordial, body scrubs, and healthy cooking – delicious bliss balls, cupcakes, and muesli bars.

Our last day saw an exhausted group do some crafts in the morning – bottling cordial, making cards, boxes, and flax weaving. After this we went to the Edgar Centre and played bubble soccer in large zorb balls. We returned to school for a relaxing afternoon with a shared pizza lunch and watched Hairspray together.

It was a great week and much fun was had by the students and staff involved. We were super lucky with the weather and truly fulfilled our goal of Mind, Body, and Soul.