Here is thepost for day 2. Yet again the photos are proving problematic. We will try to upload more as the day goes on.
Day 2 – the first full day and everyone was very excited. Again the weather was beautiful and this makes such a difference to the day. The scenes of the loch in the early morning was stunning and it has stayed like that all day.
The children in the centre were all up bright and breezy by 7.15 and were ready for the day in plenty of time. They had to be packed and ready for the morning, lunchtime and the afternoon and considering they had wet activities they did well.
Breakfast was at 8am and the children had cereal, juice and their cooked breakfast. They had the choice of bacon, beans, scrambled eggs and toast. While they had breakfast they also made their packed lunches. One or two didn’t know whether they had margarine or butter in their sandwiches as Mum always makes them!!
The first activity started at 9.30am and the groups were all lined up – five of our groups and nine groups from the other school. But even with 150 children there they were well behaved and eager to get started.
The instructors are all great this year and there is a good mix of young and the more ‘experienced’ guys and they are all so enthusiastic about the activities they do. They are great at holding the kids attention and making sure they know what they have to do.
This was going to be a WET day! Raft building was the order of the day and all the children were looking forward to this…..or at least to the end of the session when they would be on or IN the water.
Mrs Forrest and Jack’s groups were raft building first. Each group has to design their raft – but they are well guided and with set equipment the design soon takes shape. Each group gets 4 large or 6 small barrels and 6 logs and rope for tying it altogether. This takes about 1.5 hours of the session. Then when they are ready to set sail they head off to get life jackets and paddles before returning to see how successful they have been.
The excitement mounts as they push the rafts into the water and then they suddenly realise that as they walk into the water it is actually COLD! Soon there are screams, giggles and great excitement as they venture out from the shore and when they realise the raft is actually ‘working’ the cheers ring out! However, they soon start falling in or jumping in and had a whale of a time.
Miss Gordon’s group were sailing and the children were in the little sailing boats. Miss Gordon was in the ‘rescue’ boat but the sailors found it difficult due to the lack of wind and so they bobbled about a bit as they tried to pick up the little bits of wind there was. But they had great fun and enjoyed when all the boats were pulled back from the middle of the loch by the rescue boat.
Miss Clark’s group were problem solving and they worked on a wide variety of activities round the centre and in the woods. There are some new activities this year and some are quite challenging and give the children the chance to lead and be led by others and develop skills of working with others. And,,,they all loved scrambling about under nets, through tyres and round trees!
Mr Taylor’s group were learning how to ‘Arch’! Their instructor was great and over the session the children really came on and were doing very well! They spent a long time aiming at ‘money’ on the target trying to hit the bulls eye! This activity is great as so many of the children have never done this before and really enjoy the challenge of trying to get better and better as they go.
Then it was lunchtime and we all had our lunch outside the boathouse in the glorious sunshine and then got ready for the afternoons activity. We made sure water bottles were refilled to make sure they all had plenty of liquids.
Three groups were raft building in the afternoon while two groups were problem solving. The raft builders worked in three groups and the problem solving groups worked in one big group.
It is fair to say that the rafters all really enjoyed this activity and the screams of delight and laughter as they rafted out. All three rafts were very successful and they had a race out and back to the shore and then played a game chasing after a ball and trying to get it thrown in to the opposing rafts!
The problem solvers were very busy. One of the trails was a rope line which wound its self round and through the trees and led through tyres and a variety of other objects! However, to go round the course they had to work in pairs…..with one blindfolded and one acting as a guide. This was a real trust exercise and the children worked well to navigate the course. Having finished they swapped places but this time the guide was not allowed to speak to them as they led them round the course!
So by the end of the afternoon they were all tired out. And many were WET……VERY WET! So it was back to the accommodation to change and get dried off. The ones ones in the centre had their visit to the shop today and tomorrow the other ones will get to go and shop!
Tea was tomato soup, pizza or sausages and chips followed by pancakes and ice cream! This went down very well.
The evening session had two groups biking, two groups canoeing and one group doing archery. The shorter sessions do mean they don’t get the same amount of time to develop their skills but they do still really enjoy it.
Tonight they are in bed slightly earlier due to them all being tired and hopefully it will be a quiet night.
There are plenty of photos from today and hopefully we will get a slide show with no ‘watermark’ across it like yesterdays – although we had over 300 hits on the blog site today!
So…we are now half way through! Two more busy days to go!
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