Portsea Camp Day 3

"Here's what you do..."

Rock climbing practise...

while one person climbs the pole and then navigates across the wire to the other pole...

using ropes while fifteen metres off the ground!

An exploration table of sea artifacts.

The Oceanography walk along the beach.

Looking for clues while orienteering.

The girls of my group.

Friday, September 9^th

We woke up this morning to hard rain on our sheet metal roof.

We started off a bit slowly because no one was sure what was going to happen on a rainy day. We thought they would have rainy day activity plans and they thought that we would!

My group was on breakfast setup and the two boy helpers were again invaluable.

After much confusion, and the rain letting up, they decided to go ahead with all the activities except the beach ones because we didn't want the kids getting sandy and wet

after they had already packed up their kits. My group had two activities in the morning: 1) we were supposed to have beach activities but they opted for free time on the oval with the balls and equipment that we brought. 2) orienteering where pairs of students took a map and a card that they had to punch when they found a marked place on the map. Then they had to jumble the matching letters to find the mystery word. They loved this activity as they got to run around the whole place with their friends looking for clues.

The buses arrived before lunch and Don and the two male parents helped the drivers load up all the luggage.

Lunch was the last thing we did. It was chicken finger wraps with salads and a cookie.

After that we loaded up the kids and drove back to school.

It was bedlam there, as despite the announcements that all the kids were to meet in the BER (the work room for the 5's and 6's) for final roll and to make sure we knew how they were getting home, parents took their kids without signing them out. Imagine 150 kids and all their luggage and their parents crammed into a couple of halls and a classroom and you get the picture. I also had to find parents to return puffers, epi-pens and medicine.

I am glad I had the opportunity to go to an Australian outdoor education camp. There are many similarities to the camp I have been taking kids to at Albion Hills for the last 20 years. But, there are also some very big differences. I can't imagine the TDSB agreeing to any of the high risk activities or the water activities. The focus here was on challenging oneself and trying something new, as opposed to curriculum lessons. I am also glad that I wasn't assigned to trying to get the 20 boys in one room to sleep!

I left school as quickly as possible and got stuck in frustrating traffic on the way home.

Then I had to take the airport bus to catch my flight to Darwin to start my next adventure!

Thankfully the traffic wasn't too bad and I arrived with some time to relax. I flew Virgin Australia. On route they announced the footy score between Hawthorne and Geelong.