Brentwood Preparatory School Magazine

71 Brentwood School Preparatory A Fly on the Wall - Year Six Every night before we went to bed we played games in the woods, for example camouflage, hide and seek and so on. The first night away in our cosy tents was ok but someone in our tent felt really cold in the night so we had to get a teacher and wrap her in a lot of layers. I think we were the only tent who didn’t talk all night. The meals were ok, the best meal was probably the pizza and I had margherita. One of my favourite events that happened at Bushcraft was when we went on a hike. We heard screaming in the woods so we ran as fast as we could to see what was happening. When we arrived we saw a broken plane and our teachers in the plane and some other teachers lying on the ground outside covered in strawberry jam. We had to save them using our first aid skills we got taught on the second day and we used our own clothes as bandages. We also went on another hike and on the hike we saw a drop bear eating in the trees. We were close to it so we had to stay extra quiet. We had to get back to camp as quickly and as quietly as we could but when we arrived we saw claw marks on all of the trees, they were so deep. The person who was cooking lunch had to hide from the drop bear, it was fantastic but frightening. The head tribe leader Sam was getting a little worried. On another day we created our own traps to capture rabbits. I built my trap with Amy and Daisy-Rose. We got a long bendy stick and tied some rope to it and put two small sticks into the ground then tied the rope to them and with the rest of the rope we tied a knot so when the rabbit would jump on the hole of the knot, the rabbit would be tied up and during the night Sam would shoot it. In the morning, we watched Sam break the rabbit’s arms, legs and neck. He twisted the rabbit’s neck all the way round twice to break it. He then cut a bit of its fur off and gradually pulled off all of the fur and ripped off its tail. Then he started to take out its heart, liver and brain and when the skin was off we saw rabbit droppings so Sam put his finger up the rabbit’s bottom and poked out the droppings.................... charming! I really didn’t understand how Sam was able to do this as he is a vegetarian. On the last day of Bushcraft we had “Tribes got Talent.” My tribe acted out an event that happened one of the days. We acted out trying to save the teachers and I was left to die unfortunately. The funniest performance was probably from the Bras. Damifola pretended to be Mr Prideaux and put a big bouncy ball under his top but when he was acting, Mr Prideaux saw him and got him under his armpit and dragged him over to the teachers tents, then turned him upside down and his head nearly landed in the fire. Then he ran back as fast as he could back to the children’s tent crying with laughter. Sadly it came to the day when we had to leave Bushcraft. We travelled on a coach for 2 hours to get back to cloudy Brentwood. It was a week of fun and a week I will never forget. By Isabella Born Monday 22nd May We got on the coach to go to Bushcraft in Oxford. After a long coach journey we met our group leader Sam. Then we walked half an hour into the woods to our camp. We then got into our tribes, (our tribe leader was called Nunu, he was from Portugal). Once we were in our tribes we came up with a chant and a dance type Haka to go with it to perform to the other tribes. We had beat boxers, dancers and singers in our performance. We also made a flag and named our group the Poppadomers. Then we got into our tents, I was with Thibaud, Dami, Jed, Calum, Tom G, Finlay, Ben and Tom E. Next we got into our tribe again and built a shelter that we had the choice to sleep in. We were all very excited. Tuesday 23rd May 2017 After a terrible night’s sleep we woke to the sunshine and sound of the birds. We learnt survival skills and made our own fires, learnt about medical uses for things found in the woods and what can be eaten in the woods. We cooked kebabs on the fire for lunch. At night Sam made a song up called Da Moose, Da Moose, which you sing in a Jamaican Accent. Wednesday 24th May 2017 Sam told us we were going swimming... but in a freezing cold lake. It was so cold that I couldn’t feel my body when I got out. But eventually we adjusted to the temperature. Will and I were doing backflips into the lake. After we were meant to go fishing but instead some of the boys asked if we could sun bathe, so we did. When everyone met back together we heard a drop bear. Drop bears are like koalas and they make a barking like sound (they can be very dangerous). The weight of one is designed to kill its prey when it drops down on it this is why they snap loads of branches. Thursday 25th May 2017 We went on a long walk and we heard screaming then saw smoke so ran towards it. We then saw a plane, wrecked in the middle of the forest. The survivors were our teachers and tribe leaders, we had to use the survival skills they taught us to get them to safety. After the teachers smeared blood on some of our faces. Later we set traps in our tribes to catch rabbits we were going to skin tomorrow. That night I slept in the shelter. We stayed up very late. When we were up we heard someone shooting the rabbits. Friday 26th May 2017 Today those who wanted to had the opportunity to skin the rabbits we captured. Our trap successfully worked along with most of the others. In the end I did skin a rabbit, the group next to us accidentally cut its stomach open, it stank. The worst thing about it is the crunch when you have to snap its legs off. It was very hard to take the hide off. I had before cut a rabbit’s leg off but this was a whole different experience. Again I slept in the shelters but got a bit more sleep. In the end it was the best school trip ever and I slept very, very, very well the night I got home. By Jackson Booth 6AM Monday 22nd May: This was the day. The whole of year 6 was off to Oxford to do Bushcraft. The coach journey was about two hours but it was definitely worth it. Once we got off the coach we set off for a 15-minute walk to camp. Once we got there we got to know the people who worked there. There were Sam, Tish (the fish), Nu Nu, Bettie, Helen, and Ambra. We started with an activity of making our tribe name, a tribe flag and a story of how our tribe began. Next, we played some games and ate dinner. I personally really enjoyed evenings but I did notice some people hated evenings.