Year 6 Residential Activities

As the updated guidance for schools was announced over the Easter holiday, I was excited to see that residentials were allowed, and even though we would need to go a day later than planned, the trip to Pembrokeshire would be back on.

Iupdated the Firefly Pages and was ready to go when the email that no outdoor centre wants to send landed in my inbox. Sealyham was closing, permanently. There was no chance of booking a place elsewhere and it simply was not possible to not have a residential of some sort. It was quickly agreed that an activity week would work, maybe even camping on the schools grounds. Five days full of activities including Sailing, Stand-Up-Paddle-boarding, Horse Riding, Mission impossible, Frisbee Golf, Axe Throwing, Adventure Challenge, Climbing and Archery were organised, with camping on the Upper to finish off the week.

The children were truly amazing during the week and, despite not being the residential we had all hoped for, it was an excellent week as you can see from the accounts written by the children. Thank you to all the staff who helped on the week and to all the families whose tents were borrowed for the camping.

On the Activities Week, one of the activities was Mr Murphy’s Adventure Challenge.

It involved orienteering, map-reading, team building exercises and problem solving which were all needed to complete the challenge. Firstly, we used the app What Three Words to locate each of the points on the map, then we had either a challenge or a problem to solve. It started off at the Upper, which then continued into the Mendip Forest. Some of the challenges included; a maze, a medical backpack challenge, a memory card team game, and a game where the whole team had to pass through a hoop. We had to collect letters as well as doing the challenges and out of those letters we created words. The points on the map took us all the way around the forest but in the end, we had found lots of letters. At the end, Mr Murphy bought us all ice cream because we did such a good job! Overall, I think it was a great end to Activities week!

During the Year 6 Activity Week one of my favourite parts was the Sailing and Stand-Up Paddle-boarding day.

We did it at a lake which was part of an activity centre which did many water sports. In the morning we did the Stand-Up Paddle-boarding (SUP) and, once we were in our wetsuits and life jackets, we started off by learning how to stand on our boards and how to paddle. Once we had got in the water, we all began on our knees, before progressing to standing up.

We played games on the paddleboards, one of which was called ‘World Domination’. Everyone picked a country, and if you tapped someone else’s board three times of the front then they were also your country and had to go around tapping the other boards turning them into the country they switched too.

In the afternoon we were meant to go sailing, but there was no wind, so we went kayaking instead. To start, as with the Paddle-boarding, we were told how to steer and how to paddle. The first thing we did once in the water was go over to the other side of the lake where there was a car - which had belonged to Simon Cowell - that had been driven into the lake. After we had all caught a glimpse of it, we did a few races a bit like playing bulldogs, then went over to a long wooden slide on the bank which went into the water.

We all had two goes on the kayak slide, then got out of our wetsuits and life vests went back to the Upper again. I found the whole day really fun and would have loved to go again!

During the Year 6 residential, my favourite activity was sailing.

We sailed on a lake in a type of boat called a laser fun boat meant for two people. I had a lot of fun as I worked with a partner meaning we could talk to one another while we sailed. I think we did well as at least we didn’t capsize like some others, one in the middle of the course which caused chaos as boats swerved to avoid hitting the capsized boat and each other! I really enjoyed this activity, and I would call it one of the highlights of my Year 6. I found the whole day really fun and would have loved to go again!