Over the month of March, we took almost 750 year 8 students down to Finlay Park on Lake Karapiro for our four-day camping experience.
Some reflections from our Year 8’s demonstrate a few of the activities available to them:
Finlay Park camp was an exhilarating experience filled with action packed adventures every single day. Over the course of the four days and three nights, students had the opportunity to have one night at outcamp and two days at either the fales or the cabins. Outcamp is like a night in the wild while the cabins and fales were at the main camp. One of my favourite activities at Finlay Park was the magic carpet; this was a long ‘carpet’ that had minuscule handles and the boat driver was trying to shake you off. But as always, there were a lot of challenges that camp had in store for us. For me, the muddy and rainy animal survival activity was a hard time but I pushed through and persevered. Overall, camp was an amazing time that was fun, challenges, and enjoyment pushed into four days. A huge thank you to all the teachers, parent helpers, the support staff at Finlay Park, and all of the students.
By Keddy Gong (Room 54)
Magic carpet, which was very fun, was my most favourite activity in the whole camp, and world. It was fun falling and sliding off – it gave you a massive adrenaline rush. Daniel Kulakov (Room 21)
Kayaking was made memorable by it being fun and funny, and playing the shark and minnow game. Sahana (Room 32)
We did a very interesting activity in the camp, which is animal survival. This activity made us understand the food chain in the animal world. I was impressed by this game. Yuehan Hao (Room 22)
A huge thanks to all staff and parent/whanau volunteers who were able to come down and take part in camp, supporting both the school and students. At Northcross, we highly value camp – it is an amazing experience and opportunity to build strong bonds as a class, for students to get to know other teachers (specialist staff and Northcross leadership) in a completely different environment, building connections and shared stories. Students develop Northcross Learning Dispositions of being an explorer (trying new activities), self-motivated (growing in confidence), engaged and collaborative (develop friendships), and persevering (resilience).
We would like to thank all students, staff and parents for ensuring our camping programme at Finlay Park was such a success.
Christina England
Deputy Principal/Camp Leader
