Year 4 Carroty Wood

I never realised how many woods lined the M20 – with every one that passed came the question “Is that Carroty Wood?”… My reply “No… That’s just a wood!”. After 50 minutes of this game we arrived safely at our destination. We must thank Mr Ainsworth for teaching the children ‘Musical Memories’ as they sang their hearts out ‘Aggadoooaaaahh!’ At least we have a song for our assembly sorted.

It is always such a relief to arrive at Hornbeam House, this is our third year running the trip and it is great to see many staff who remembered us from last year!

After a welcome talk the children were told their room allocations. This was greeted with much joy! Everyone is thrilled with their roommates. Once unpacked, the children (I use this term very lightly) were required to make their beds. After assisting with stuffing what felt like 5000 duvet covers we are now all getting ready for our first activity: Low Ropes! Will we see the Carroty Wood crocodile? Only time will tell… I daren’t mention the weather yet. Please keep your fingers crossed.

Our Year 4s are simply fantastic! We are all having an excellent time on our first residential trip!

When you last left us, we were getting ready to head to the Low Ropes for our first activity. It would seem the wettest February on record has helped to create the ‘best mud’ they have ever had! Dressed in our ‘muddy attire’ we headed down for two hours of Shrekesq fun. The children showed impressive collaboration and worked together to navigate the many ‘muddy’ obstacles. Every child was given the opportunity to miss an activity if they wished – unsurprisingly the muddier the activity the larger the crowd. The rite of passage ‘Carroty Swap Challenge’ proved extremely popular with many new and imaginative ways of crossing created. We had the ‘Solly Straddle’, ‘Jasper Jump’, ‘Taylor Swift’ and the ‘Safiya Swing’. Our cheeks aching from laughter we returned to our chalet for a wash down with a hose, shower, warm clothes and Mrs Mellin’s legendary hot chocolate. We are currently having some down time before dinner with everyone enjoying themselves. We have children playing Uno, table tennis, dominoes, top trumps and a rather large game of hide and seek currently in progress! The catering staff have just began preparing our evening meal of lasagne and we are all really excited for our evening swim!

Let’s hope all this activity will get the children nice and tired and ready for bed tonight.