This year at the BIS HCMC Junior campus, all the residential visits took place over a two weeks ‘trip week’ programme. Although sleeping for one night in the gym may not appear to be as adventurous as taking a trip to the beach or getting on a plane, for the students in Year 3 it is exactly that – an adventure!
This year at the BIS HCMC Junior campus, all the residential visits took place over a two weeks ‘trip week’ programme. Although sleeping for one night in the gym may not appear to be as adventurous as taking a trip to the beach or getting on a plane, for the students in Year 3 it is exactly that – an adventure!
Ask any professional explorer or adventurer and they will confirm that it takes courage and perseverance to face a scary challenge when away from home and without the support of family. For many in the year group it is the first time that they have slept away from family and not been with them for more that 24 hours! I was very proud to see so many children facing the challenge of being away from home, being brave and persevering despite the fact they were anxious and worried.
The sleepover was a huge success and all the children enjoyed the evening’s activities. With opportunities to make slime, hide under teacher’s desks and be a fashion designer, there were activities to keep everyone engaged and develop skills of team work and begin to build new friendships across different classes. Hide and seek and slime-making proved to be the most popular of the activities and luckily all children were found and not too much slime got into Ms Paula’s carpet. The evening meal was provided on the basketball court and all the children showed respect and patience even though there was a rather long queue for food.
Once all the activities were finished and hopefully all the children were as tired as the teachers, everyone found a space to snuggle up in a sleeping bag or blanket next to their friends in the gym. With 137 children sleeping in the gym I’m sure you can imagine that it wasn’t the easiest place to get to sleep! Fortunately, Ms Andrea and Ms Paula read everyone a bedtime story and this put us all in a sleepy mood before the lights went out. Plenty of children needed to wake up in the night to go out to the toilet and get a drink but mostly everyone managed to get some sleep and there were plenty of snores echoing around the room. With the sunrise at around 6:10, most children woke up and began to sort themselves out, pack their things and go for breakfast which was once again on the basketball court.
The next day in Year 3 was spent having a longer Golden Time, doing some light work and relaxing; there were plenty of sleepy children and teachers that couldn’t concentrate on really tricky work! I am very proud of all the children for what they achieved over the night and would like to thank all teachers, teaching assistants and all other BIS HCMC members of staff that helped to make the sleepover such a successful event. It is a very important challenge for all Year 3 children to face; face it head on they did!
Mr Michael Martin, Year 3 Leader & Class Teacher
