Our girls love our Beyond Boundaries camps and the many activities on offer within them. The camps provide our girls opportunities to explore new ways of thinking, learning about different things, challenging themselves physically, emotionally, and socially and having loads of fun! For many, their memories from the Beyond Boundaries camps will last a lifetime.

Our Beyond Boundaries Program builds through the years, offering age-appropriate activities for the Year levels attending. A wonderful element of our Program is the cross-Year level interactions the girls gain, with the Program often having two Year levels attending together.

This week, our Years 5&6 girls are on camp together at Camp Jungai at Rubicon, about two hours from Melbourne. Next week, will see our Years 3&4 girls attend Camp Gundiwindi at Silvan. Our Year 1 girls will be staying late at School next Friday, with our Year 2 girls staying overnight in our Music Room.

While engaging in activities different to those offered at School, girls often see different qualities and interests shown by other girls, which often leads to girls developing a wider circle of friends with different shared interests. Our aim is for girls to have a wide circle of friends across a range of interests and activities.

The Program also encourages the girls to take greater responsibility for themselves, and their belongings, as well as developing their abilities in being conscientious and understanding of others. Sharing a cabin at camp is a perfect example. When in a cabin, girls learn to work as a team to keep the cabin tidy. They learn they need to be independent and are responsible for keeping their things neatly packed at all times and not spread all over the cabin. There are no parents there to tidy up after them, they must do it themselves!

The girls learn to compromise, collaborate, and negotiate – skills that will stand them in good stead well into the future. They must change their thinking from ‘me’ to ‘team.’ For some, this might be a steep learning curve, but also a signal that these skills need to be developed.

The girls also learn to be organised. This means waking in time to get ready for breakfast and the day, bringing a hat, water bottle, sunscreen etc. To do this, they need to know and prepare for the day’s schedule and think and plan ahead of time.

Girls on camp quickly learn that they need to employ good social skills and understand the social settings of communal living. This is quite different from School where girls go home at the end of each day, breaking the social engagement. On camp, these skills are used from when they wake, until they go to sleep.

For our younger girls they learn from the older girls how to do things. They see how they lead and be role models. The older girls learn to lead and set standards, knowing the younger girls are watching. They develop patience and see their impact on those younger than them.

Our wonderful staff give their time to take the girls on these camps, often leaving their own families to do so. They demonstrate extraordinary care of our girls and are there to help them learn and develop the skills they need.

Camps are wonderful experiences.

Booklists for 2023

Booklists will be live on the Junior School mystcatherines Portal on Tuesday 18 October 2022.  

Orders to Campion Books must be made by 6 December 2022. 

 Upcoming Calendar Dates: Term 4

 Out of School Hours Care – Term 4 Week 2 Activities

Upcoming activities for Term 4 Week 2 are detailed here.

St Catherine’s School offers an Out of School Hours Care program to all ELC and Junior School families. The program is implemented by our provider ‘After the Bell’ and operates within the ELC building. Parents are reminded that if you need to use the Before School Care or After School Care service, registrations need to be made in advance with ‘After the Bell’. Please allow up to five business days for your registration to be processed before your child can begin attending the program. Registration is free. All families are encouraged to register so that they can use this service in the event that you are unable to pick up your child.

Before School Care – 7.00am to 8.45am

After School Care – 3.00pm to 6.00pm

Registrations can be completed via the ‘After the Bell’ website.

Please phone 9758 6744 for all inquiries.