Students are working hard on final preparations for Presentation Day this Sunday. They are busy writing speeches and making finishing touches to their practical pieces. The music, drama and circus groups are also practicing and polishing off their performances. Presentation Day is now less than 48 hours away and the students are keenly aware of time management. Saturday will be an important time to set up venues and rehearse speeches. The expectation that all students will present and the fact that there can be no extensions create an appropriate level of pressure for the students. It is good practice to be able to meet deadlines and the students invariably rise to the occasion. The sense of relief come Sunday evening will be quite palpable!! There are some nervous students, however they know that their audiences will be supportive and encouraging family members, which makes it less scary.

Last Sunday students were part of the Wesley at Clunes Harvest Feast. This event is part of their Environmental Sustainability program. This event aims to bring the community together and to share a meal that has minimal impact on the environment. Many of the ingredients have been sourced from student and staff vegetable gardens, local farms and within a 100km radius of the campus where possible. The Harvest Feast was a wonderful community event, which enabled students, staff and their families to come together.

On Tuesday all students participated in the Challenge By Choice Day, which is part of the “Self” program. Earlier in the term students chose a challenge to undertake in one of four categories: physical, performance, leadership and quiet. Students were placed into groups and on Tuesday and participated in either Indoor Rock climbing/Abseiling (Physical) Performance in Ballarat (Performance), The Clunes Amazing Race (Leadership) or Yoga and Meditation (Quiet). It was a positive day and most students took on the challenge of stepping out of their comfort zone in a supportive environment.

Yesterday (Thursday) students spent a morning out at the Lord Clyde Reserve (Ullina). At the start of the term all students are given a plant to water and nurture over the term with the aim to plant it at Lord Clyde Reserve in Week 7. This is a day where students show that they have developed a connection to their plant and to the reserve and now know how to be actively involved in re-vegetation work.

With only 8 days to go before Group 41 leave Clunes there is still much to do. The final week at Clunes will be a very busy one with lots of activities still to be completed. Self assessments will be written by students, enabling them to reflect upon their challenges and achievements in both the Clunes Project and their time in the Houses. The Beckworth Day with students running or walking from Clunes to the top of Mount Beckworth, the Full Day Solo, Cluster Sports Final and the All Night Movie Night will also be completed prior to Group 41 departing! No doubt many will sleep in the car, all the way home to Melbourne!!

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday. Please read the email that you have been sent which has specific information about the day. It is important that you are at your child’s venue at least 10 minutes prior to the 10am start time.

Week Seven and it was time for the moment all fitness members had been waiting for, the Fitness Challenge 2010. Students had taken this test once before at the start of term and were looking for much improvement this time round, and that they did. Every member of the elite fitness squad improved by at least 2 rounds, but even more impressive was that over 90 percent of the class finished the 11 round Challenge that included over 100 push ups, 100 crunches, 200 lunges, 200 jump squats and over 20 minutes of holds all up, a terrific effort from the squad. Mind blowing for some, easy for others, the Fitness Challenge 2010 was a great moment for all to recognise in achievement.

Creative art is coming to an end and artists have started to round up their pieces of brilliance for Presentation Day. Such pieces of art to be seen are Sketches, Aboriginal Art, Poems and more. The Creative Art Squad has been working hard all Term, going to places such as the Quartz Reef, Queens Park, Talbot, Talbot Railway Station and more. A fantastic display of all art will amaze the young and old on Presentation Day, so be sure to bring the family and see what the Creative Art members have put together.

In the Black and White Disco on the 13th March people were dressed up in all kinds of things. From Togas like the Ancient Romans wore to inside-out Wesley tracksuits. It was a night with bright lights and plenty of loud new music. There was music such as Replay by Iyaz and The Way You Make Me Feel by Michael Jackson. Teachers were being thoughtful of how tired we were and helped us out by setting up cordial and tables for a rest after we felt we’d had enough dancing. The night was coordinated well by the teachers and it was a success as usual. There were prizes for best dressed and best dancers.

Cluster on Thursday night the 18th March was a very tightly fought battle. It was Red vs. Green and it meant whoever won could potentially be coming first ahead of the cluster finals. The innovative chant by Red won them an advantage to help them along the way. Red had key players out for the first half of cluster and Green won the first game of dodge ball. Red bounced back winning Ultimate Frisbee and this promised for a tight final game. It was very tense and the score line kept switching but Red came out victors in the last game of partner soccer. Special mentions to a boy who had sliced his finger but to his credit played very well in partner soccer. All in all, this will make for a very tight cluster final series.

On Tuesday 16th of March Wesley students at Clunes took part in a program called ‘Challenge by Choice’. The groups in which the students were broken up into were Silent and Still, Performance, Physical and Leadership. The students had to elect a group that would take them ‘out of their comfort zone’ and that would have been something new to them. I along with many other students were part of the Performance group which involved travelling to Ballarat to recite poems, play games, and performing circus or any sort of tricks on a main street in Ballarat. The idea for this activity was that kids like me who are generally scared of performing and speaking in front of a group of strangers tried to overcome that fear and hoped to develop skills for later on in life for performances and public speaking. Overall the Challenge by Choice programme for most kids on the day succeeded in its original goal and in some cases where it didn’t it still provided an entertaining day for most of the students.

Near the end of the term on Sunday 14th March we put on a harvest feast for the campus. Every house was given ingredients and asked to supply two meals for the feast. All the food that was used was in season and was produced close to Clunes which reduced food miles. We set up enough tables and chairs for everyone to have a seat and even a stage for musical performances. The feast consisted of a 3 course meal, stone soup and bread as an entree, homemade wood fired pizzas, salad and potatoes for main course, and very tasty apple crumble and waffles for dessert. After every course musical performances played and made the atmosphere a lively place. The Harvest feast was a prime example of how a community comes together.

On Friday the 12th March the running group had to run up Mt Hollowback two times. The groups drove out to Mt Hollowback but stopped about 1km away. From the moment we started our stretches to the time we got back on the buses to come back to campus there was a lot of encouragement going around. As a group and a team we ran as a pack to Mt Hollowback and to the second gate of the mountain. Along the way we had a few ‘car back’ and ‘car front’ calls and everyone very sensibly got to the side of the road. We also came across a snake and everyone dealt with it well, not panicking and making our way around it. When the pack got past the second gate everyone spaced out and gave it their best shot at running this mountain twice. Everyone pushed their hardest and the amount of great encouragement going around significantly boosted the group.

Sunday sleep in was awesome, especially because we have missed so much of them because of busy days like celebration day, and we will miss the next one because of presentation day. The most recent Sunday sleep in felt so good because I was extra tired having missed many of the sleep ins in place of tiring busy days. The weekly sleep in is what everyone at Clunes looks forward to, and when it is cancelled due to busy days like the Wesley at Clunes 10 year celebration day the groans echo throughout the campus.

Friday night basketball is personally one of my favourite times at Clunes, as playing basketball for a club in Melbourne basketball is one of my hobbies, and community basketball is a great way for me to keep practicing away from Melbourne. We haven’t yet had locals come down to play I don’t think the word ever spread out to them. Overall Community Basketball is one of the best and most fun things at Clunes and I haven’t missed going to one yet.

On Tuesday every student had to participate in the Challenge by Choice program which teaches us to step out of our comfort zone and experience something new. For the challenge Quiet and Still a group of around 20 of us took a bus out to an Ashram that was so peaceful and beautiful. Our first activity was a 30 minute yoga session in which we all stretched and learnt different core movements in silence. After our first session we all went into a hall where they prepared different kinds of teas and a selection of fruit for a quick snack. We then went back to do our last activity which was a relaxation task where our teacher taught us breathing techniques and ways to feel our body while lying down on our backs. Everyone found this so peaceful that most of us even feel asleep and felt our bodies drift off half way through! Then lastly the Ashram prepared a vegetarian meal for everyone and we relaxed around the temples, huts and tables until the bus came and collected us all to take us back to campus. All up everyone enjoyed it a lot, because it was so soothing and silent and for the loud people that came along it was a bit of a challenge for everyone.

Last Friday for community enrolments a group of 7 students went down to entertain and hang out with the senior citizens. Although only a couple of citizens showed up we started by playing the game ‘Klop’ outside the building. Everyone got evolved and as frosty as the grass was that morning we all had fun. The game went quite quickly but got some laughs as many people went out because they had strikes and was a pretty close game. After the game we all went inside to have some cordial and biscuits for morning tea, and just sat around the table talking about how Clunes is going and what is news with everyone. Then lastly after we signed the book with our names telling them we’ve been there, we all cleaned up in the kitchen and said goodbyes as we walked back to campus. I loved being with the senior citizens, as it was so fun talking to the town’s people and playing games I’ve never played before!

On Tuesday the entire campus completed a Challenge by Choice program in which we did an activity that was personally challenging for us. The choices were Quiet and Still, Performance, Leadership & Problem Solving and Physical, which was my challenge. We went to an indoor rock climbing centre in Bendigo where we were shown how to do the easy walls, the hard walls, and abseiling. Some people even did the highest wall in the centre blindfolded and did abseiling backwards. The challenge of this activity was to trust ourselves enough to climb without falling, even though we knew if we did there would always be a rope to catch us. I remember almost being at the top of the highest wall when my hands were slipping and I couldn’t find any rocks to grab onto. I turned around and almost screamed because of the height. Although once I faced my fears they didn’t seem so bad any more.

On Thursday everyone went to Birches Creek to plant the trees that we’d been caring for over the last seven weeks. Once we’d found a suitable spot we wrote a letter to our plants and someone who might see them in 30 years from now. There were guiding questions that made us think about how the world will be in 30 years and what kind of people would be in it. Once some people that fallen in the creek on the journey across dried off we talked about the impact of our new trees and how their survival would help the world. Planting a tree was a great experience because it made us feel like we’d left our mark on the land but instead of ugly graffiti it was a positive change that could one day grow into something amazing.