This year it is a weekend away at Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation in Narrabeen from Friday 8th November to Sunday 10th November for primary school children (aged 7 and above) and their families. 

This camp is all about community, making friends and building children’s resilience. The program in based on resilience principles, and has the following goals; building supportive relationships, build autonomy and responsibility, managing our emotions, and create opportunities for personal challenges.

There is a fully planned program for children during the camp. Children will have choice of outdoor group challenges and activities facilitated by a Department of Sport and Recreation Leaders, and creative workshops. There will be a resilience workshop for parents and children facilitated by Resilience In Kids.  

The camp is designed for primary school children (aged 7 and above) and their families. To enable families to be able to attend together, we have reduced price tickets for children under 7. Children under the age of 7 will not be able to participate in the activities run by the Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation unfortunately. There will be some craft supplies available and the general facilities of the Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation, but it will be the parents' responsibility to supervise and care for children under 7 years of age.

We know that many children and adults may not know other campers. We have designed activities to support meeting and making new friends. Come with the spirit of sharing and getting to know your children better, and maybe making some friends yourself. 

Resilience workshops

The goal of the camp is to build our children’s resilience. This year we have the team from Resilience In Kids coming to run workshops specifically designed for our camp. The aim of the workshop is to develop children’s social and emotional skills, so there is an emphasis on working together as a group.

The workshops are fun play-based sessions, focusing on building self-confidence, and helping children learn how to handle their emotions. Each workshop starts with a check in, then a game, some main activities, a relaxation exercise and a check out.  

The Resilience In Kids team will also be running a workshop for parents, focusing on sharing practical tools and strategies that parents can use at home to strengthen their children’s resilience. Parents will learn how they can help their children understand how to manage their emotions, how they can help build their children’s confidence and help them feel OK being who they are and how they can help their children manage challenging friendship situations, including standing up for themselves and handling unkind behaviour and bullying.

Activities

The Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation will be running a number of activities over the weekend for children and parents. Activities have been chosen that will extend children’s comfort zones, with the aim of increasing their resilience through physical challenges, and group work. 

• Rock climbing
• Canoeing
• Archery
• High Ropes

The site has many other facilities we will be making use of including bike tracks, sports fields, athletics tracks, cricket nets, swimming pools and tennis courts.

The Sydney Sixers will be joining us on Saturday morning to run a cricket workshop for families. As well as their blow up cricket pitch, children will also be able to have a turn on their inflatable slide.

Meals

All meals are provided by the excellent chefs at the Sport and Recreation centre. Starting with a welcome dinner on Friday night for everyone to get to know their new friends. Breakfast, lunch and dinner will be provided each day, as well as snacks throughout the day. Camp will finish with a shared lunch on Sunday afternoon. All dietary requirements are catered for. Please let us know when you book if you have any specific needs.

Accommodation

Camp is about making friends. A great way to get to know new friends is to share a bunk room with them and their family! The accommodation at Sydney Academy of Sport and Recreation is school camp style with a mixture of bunk rooms and some limited smaller rooms for families with bunk beds. Pillows are provided but you will need to bring your own sleeping bags, or sheets and doonas.

We understand many families in our community would like a private room. Unfortunately, there are only 7 family rooms with 2 sets of bunks in each. We will do our best to allocate these to families that need additional privacy or have children with additional needs. Unfortunately, we are not able to guarantee family rooms, but we will do our best to accommodate everyone’s requests. If you know of another family going to camp that you are happy to share a room with please let us know when you book.

Thank you to our generous friends at Lush

Lush have financially supported the Rainbow Families camp for the second year. Last year the money was used to subsidise the cost for all families attending the camp. After consultation with the community and listening to your feedback, this year the money from Lush is being used to reduce the cost of the camp for low income families that would not be able to attend otherwise. 

Thanks to our friends at Lush we have 12 free tickets and 19 discount tickets available. Families can go in the draw for either or both of these options. Families will be selected at random. These tickets have now been allocated. 

Tickets

Tickets include all meals from Friday night to Sunday lunch, accommodation for 2 nights activities on both days and resilience workshops for children and parents.  

Adults and school children aged 7 and above $350 per person

Children aged 3-6 children $220 per person

Children under 3 are free

Tickets available here