Camp Rangi Woods  

by Mrs Zambazos

On Wednesday 16^th of November I took all of my belongings and put them on the bus. We left school at about 9.30 am and got to Camp Rangi Woods at about 10.30am.

At Camp Rangi Woods we unloaded the bus, took our gear to our cabins and then had our morning tea.

After morning tea we went to our cabins and set our beds up. I was in the Leaders Hut. I unrolled my sleeping bag and put it on my bunk bed. I put my pillow on my bed and then went and checked the toilets out! 

By the time I had set my cabin up it started to pour with rain so I found my raincoat and herded everybody inside to the main hall. Mr Davis and I gave the camp books out and sent everyone back to their cabins to fill in the activity group’s success criteria and cabin rules

Here are some examples

Activity Groups
|We will be successful in our activity groups by
- listening to the parents
- following the rules
- sticking together

Cabin Rules
- There will be no fights
- Keep the noise level down
- Keep the cabin clean
- Let others sleep
- We will be kind to each other
- We will have fun

After we had worked out our cabin rules we came back to the main hall for our lunch.

After we had our lunch it was time to start our first lot of activities.

Activities we did

Crocodile Walk

Crocodile Walk

Fern Frolic

Fern Frolic

Tree Friends

Shape Search

Shape Search

Overcrowded Island

Overcrowded Island

Bush Housie

Bush Housie

AB-IC

AB-IC

It really poured down with rain while we did these activities but we were protected a lot from the rain by the bush.

After we did these activities it was time for afternoon tea. We had some really yummy home baking.

We then went for a walk with Mr Davis leading at the front. I was at the back, we walked up the gravel track to the main entrance and Mr Davis talked to us about walking on the road at night. We sent two of the Dads off to check out the glow worm track.

We walked back to the new playground. We watched a tractor knock a big dead tree over and then we got to play in the playground for a little bit. We then walked back through the bush, the track was quite muddy.

We stopped at the chapel – this is where there is a huge rimu tree in a small clearing with seats – we looked up into the trees and listened to the sounds of the bush. By this stage the dads had caught back up with us and told Mr Davis that the glow worm track was looking good.

Here is the Wood Pigeon that I saw on camp

When we got back to camp we went and did some of our Camp Book while the parents got our tea ready.

We had sausages, potato salad and lettuce salad.

After we ate this we had ice creams in a cone which we ate outside. It was really yummy.

We then went and got our torches, our rain coats and our shoes on, we were going off to see the glow worms.

It was a long walk to the Glow Worms. We had to walk on the road first, we had a ute at the front and a ute at the back. We used our torches to help us see the way. Going over the bridge in the dark was really strange, you could hear the water rushing beneath you, but you couldn’t see it.

We had to walk down a bush track to get to the glow worms. We had to walk through a small creek, over rocks and stones, over logs. It was hard work by torch light, but the parents helped us all.

We could see glow worms on the side of the creek bank all the way to the big cave like area where there was thousands of glow worms, it was amazing. Think of all that light coming from one small insects back side!!!!

It was even darker walking back, we really needed our torches and the track seemed to go on forever. Finally we got back to camp, we had our supper and then it was time for bed.

Everyone was really excited and that made Mr Davis and Mrs Zambazos’s job off getting everyone off to sleep harder.,