In my experience on school trips, it takes children forever to wake up and get themselves organised for breakfast after the first night. To my shock, over half the children were already awake when we came to their rooms at 7:15. Breakfast was timetabled for 8:10, so I told the children that we needed to meet outside the Chateau at 7:50 for our morning meeting. The meeting normally only takes 5-10 minutes, but invariably children are still wandering down from their rooms 15 minutes after the scheduled meeting time. This morning, all the children were ready to meet at 7:45! We got our meeting over in record time, and the children had some free time before breakfast!
Breakfast was a very French affair, with cereals, bread, jams, cheese, yogurts, pain au chocolat and croissants. Again, the hot chocolate and juice machines got a good workout! After breakfast, the children made their own sandwiches for lunch with a great selection of ham, salami, tuna, eggs, cheese and salads. When told that they would be making their own sandwiches from baguettes, one child (who shall at this point remain nameless) proudly showed off the fruits of his almost 4 years of French study by asking, "What's a baguette?" Some work to be done, I think...
The children then separated into 4 groups for activities on site. The first activity I attended was team challenge, where the children had to collect sticks and hand them to their instructor. They then sat around on the grass answering challenges based on the arrangements of sticks. I was dubious about how engaged the children would be with a pile of sticks, considering the high-tech equipment they're used to using so far, but all children were completely absorbed and enthused by the activity. The children would have been more than happy to continue this activity for the entire 45 minutes, but this was only a warm-up! We walked into the forest, and had an activity where the entire group of 11 children had to stand on a see-saw and balance it for a minimum of 10 seconds. There was an activity where letters had to be placed on nodes on a web with no consecutive letters next to each other.
Archery was next for us. After deciding not to take one child's helpful suggestion that we play 'Arrow Roulette', whereby arrows are launched straight into the air, and the games continues until there is one person left standing (I'm a kill-joy, I know!), we began a competition based on hitting a target. The Silverbirch assembly on modesty clearly struck a chord with these children. When one particular child was congratulated on his aim, he responded with, 'I'm a legend, I know.'
We had a quick 10 minute break, after which we went to Trapeze. I was a little concerned with the boy who sang, 'I Believe I Can Fly' all the way to the top of the pole, 'cause just saying it doesn't make it so.
We then went straight to Abseiling, which the children really enjoyed. Some work to be done on maths, though. While children were descending the tower, their friends were trying to reassure them by letting them know how close they are to the ground. Unfortunately, the estimates varied for the child in one position from 1 cm to 100 feet. More worringly, the child on the ropes seemed equally reassured by both estimates!
We've just now eaten our lunch which we prepared earlier, and are about to board the coach for our trip to the chocolate factory!
