Year 5 Tackle the Isle of Wight

On Monday 25th April Year 5 went to the Isle of Wight for their week long residential trip. On arriving on ‘The Island’ we made our way to Osborne House (the former residence of Queen Victoria) and spent a few hours looking around. We saw the bed of Queen Victoria and the Nursery where her children played and ate their meals. We saw Prince Albert’s bath, which had warm running water and a lid. The ceilings of every room were carefully painted with beautiful patterns and some had the VA monogram. Some parts of the building were made out of marble, but some pieces were said to be painted by very talented artists to look like marble in order to save money. After visiting the gift shop we travelled to the Kingswood activity centre and got ready for a fun packed, tiring week. After we arrived we found our dorms and started to unpack. We were in a house called Medina. One of our first challenges was making our bed and some of us really struggled to get our duvet into a duvet cover! Soon we went on a tour, guided by our instructor, James. He showed us the activities, canteen, water fountains and our Our first activity on Tuesday morning was the 3G swing and it was really SCARY! It was our favourite activity, as it was 10 metres high! It is called the 3G Swing, because when you drop down on the swing from the very top you experience 3 times the pull of gravity! Our first day was packed full of amazing activities. We did outdoor climbing, a team obstacle course, aeroball and archery. In the evening we had a fun campfire: telling jokes, singing songs and solving riddles. Each evening we ended the day with hot chocolate in the canteen – yum! On Wednesday we did the zipwire and also did two sessions of bushcraft. We had to build a fire and keep it burning. This was tricky; especially with a storm brewing. We also used knives to sharpen sticks into a point – this was hard work and needed great skill. In the evening we did ‘Trail of Mystery’ in a creepy chapel. Thursday was a great day with lots of really exciting challenges and many of us had been looking forward to it. We all did ‘Leap of Faith’, go-karting, laser zone and abseiling. These activities really pushed some of us to face our fear of heights, especially the abseiling. The sense of achievement when you get to the bottom is incredible and all you want to do is have another go!

In the evening we had a movie night where we watched Pan, lying back on the bean bags with hot chocolate and our treats from home. We all really enjoyed the film, but some people missed the end of the film as they fell asleep! On our final day we ended with quad biking and ‘Balance Beam’ and then all too quickly our Isle of Wight Adventure was over and we had to wave goodbye to James and Kingswood and off to catch our ferry. We were all looking forward to seeing our families and getting back home, but also sad to be leaving the Isle of Wight; the adventure we had been looking forward to for so long was now over! The Year 5 residential was amazing and 5G were fun, enthusiastic, determined and motivated throughout our week on the Isle of Wight. We would ALL like to say a massive thank you to Mrs Brett and Mrs Hanks for looking after us so well and for giving up their time to come with us. We hope the memories you have from this trip will last a lifetime. Enjoy the pictures below!