Highnam Church Of England Primary Academy

Inspiring Everyone to Shine

Wetherleigh Drive, Highnam, Gloucester, GL2 8LW

01452 525872

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It's here - the Year 6 Residential Blog

12 July 2017 (by admin)

News from our Butlin's Adventure

Butlin’s Day 1 - Monday This the first part in a series of blogs about 2017’s Year 6 residential to Butlins! The first day was an ecstatic one, ‘Here we go!’ some excited students exclaimed as they boarded the bus. 2 and a half hours and 27 plays of Little Mix’s ‘Power’ later, we arrived. We had a classic lunch, packed outside our new accommodation. Then, once the unpacking had done, we had a tour of the area. On the tour we found the nearby beach. We loved it so much that we stayed for three hours…climbing on rocks, playing football, digging deep holes and burying feet and each other in the sand were just some of the fun things we did. After shaking all the sand off, we returned to our accommodation block and found out who our room mates were. Me (Matthew)? I was in room 104. With rumbling stomachs, we went to Quayside diner to eat our first meal. We had chicken nuggets, then the day finished with a treasure hunt in the evening. We returned to our dorms for lights out, feeling excited for the next day’s activities. Butlin’s Day 2 - Tuesday Eleven of us woke up for the early morning run with Miss Read. Running by the beach with the sun rising – a great way to start day 2 even though it left them exhausted! Energy was regained from the full English breakfast before meeting our instructor for the first activity of the day: Aerial adventures. There were high-ropes, a leap of faith and a huge zipwire, all equally as fun. Even Miss Read had a go at everything! Next we had archery, and many of us achieved the feat of hitting the gold. We also played a couple of games while shooting: in one game we had to hit red, blue and yellow (gold). At the end, it was a battle between ACID and water melons after an intense few minutes of shooting, ACID finally pulled though and won by a fraction of a margin. Later in the day, we were split in to two groups and both eventually got to do fencing and field games. Fencing was boiling in our heavily padded suits and field games had football, giant jenga and rounders. In the evening, we had a spectactularly competitive sports day but everyone ended up with a medal. The funniest part of the evening was when Mr Dean arrived on Steve’s (one of our instructors) mini Segway! Butlin’s Day 3 - Wednesday At 6:30 AM, my dorm woke up to go on the daily run. After a hard 3 mile run, we appeared back at the dorms, exhausted and ready for breakfast. After we had eaten a delicious English breakfast (again) and had brushed our teeth, we went to our first activity of the day: a dance workshop! It was a great surprise to have a visit from Mrs Harris today and she joined us for our first dance. We were learning a routine to Gangnam Style. After an hour of dancing, we moved on to an amazing magic workshop. We learnt the coin-through-bottle trick, the pom-pom-through-cup trick and the disappearing water trick. Then came lunch it was delicious. After lunch we managed to quickly fit in a quick trip to the fairground. It was so much fun, I went on 4 different rides and all were awesome. Later on we had dinner and were all then very excited because we were heading off to Splashworld for the evening. There were four intense water-chutes and most of us enjoyed every last one. When the chutes closed everyone took part in a boys vs girls float war to the death (sort of). Butlin’s Day 4 - Thursday We started off with a drum workshop, but we were surprised to find out that the drums were just upside-down bins. After a lot of banging to the beat (or, slightly off the beat) Then we had some circus skills with hula hoops, the toy, not the crisps, diablos and catching sticks. After a slap-up lunch, half of us went to the beach and the others went to the dorms. After that split up, we went to prepare for a disco but sadly,(for some at least) we had to take a photo with a person of the opposite gender before we went though. After an evening of dancing, we flopped on our beds and went to sleep straight to sleep. Butlin’s Day 5 - Friday We woke up knowing that it was the final day of our residential. We had to sort out our rooms ready to go home and pack our bags. Each night we’d had room inspection and the rooms were pretty tidy already! Once we’d waited for Tom to finish packing we headed off to the big top and to the fairground for a final opportunity to buy presents for family and to have a go on the dodgems. It was soon time to have a final photo in front of the Butlins sign and head back to collect our luggage. The coach driver set off for home at midday and we snuggled into our seats worn out after an amazing week. It wasn’t long before we pulled off the M5, past Gloucester Quays, headed along the A40 and on to Wetherleigh Drive. Thank you to Miss Gent, Miss Read, Miss Owen and Mr Dean for making the week such a memorable trip away! Thank you to all who contributed to this blog: Ruth, Calum, Duncan, Jacob and Matthew