Holsworthy Community College Survival Days

The second week of June was a very busy week down on the farm.  We started on the Monday and Tuesday with Survival Days for Holsworthy Community College students.  Specially selected students from Year 8 came out on the Monday and Year 9 on the Tuesday.  What  great 2 days we had.

Our resident Survival Expert, Roli Jones was back for a 2 day stint working the Community College.

When the students arrived, we started with an orienteering exercise.  We had a maths challenge one and a literacy "Poetic Terms" one. The students worked in their house groups for this.  They did really well and it really got them thinking, especially the map reading !!

Once completed, we then made out way down to camp, where Roli and his colleague Peter were waiting for us. After the initial safety talk, the students were split into 2 groups.  Roli did his fire session with group 1 whilst peter did a shelter demonstration with group 2.  The students were mesmerized with Roli's fire talk and demo and it was brilliant to see some students participating too.  They all then got to have a go with a kit of their own.  Peter's group loved having the chance to make different shapes and styles of shelters, using only 1 tarp and a few bungie ropes and poles.  They used their imaginations and came up with some really good ideas. After session 1 was complete, it was time for break and then the groups swapped over.

After session 2, it was lunch time.  Then it was straight into team building games.  This was a very funny afternoon.  They students were doing 2 different tasks.  One was a rope knotting exercise, in which they had to work in their teams to help each other master the knot before it was competition time against another team.  The second task was all about water !  each team were given a bucket, a jug, a piece of mat, a ball and a length of pipe, which had holes all over it.  The objective was to get the ball to the top of the pipe (on the inside) by filling the pipe with water.  Lots of hands were needed to cover the holes in the pipe.  Needless to say the students got rather wet !  But a great time was had by all.

The message behind the day was all about team building, building self confidence and using initiative and imagination.  The students really surprised each other (and the teachers) by the way they embraced the activities, showed leadership skills, listening and communication skills and those all important team building/bonding skills.  They had to work with other students they would not normally work with, were apart from their friends yet we had no issues at all over the entire 2 days.

Well done Year 8 and Year 9, you really impressed us all !!