Last Friday, October 7, the 8th grade class went on their first retreat at St. Joesph’s Salesian Center, located next to Bosco Tech. While on the retreat, they participated in many activities that involved trust, cooperation and teamwork.

The first activity was the Human Machine Activity. Students got together in groups to creative a human machine! Some examples: we created a blender, washing machine, and airplane. Then the 8th grade classes got together to create 2 huge machines for an ultimate showdown. 8A created a merry go round and sang “It’s a Small World,” while 8B created a rollercoaster! This activity showed to the classes the importance of cooperation and teamwork.

The second activity was the One fish, two fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. The classes had to find a way to grab a little toy from the leader’s hand and pass it down the line, so that everyone participates and gets a chance to touch the toy. Here we learned how to order ourselves and play like a team.

The third activity was the Blind, Mute, and No Touch Amazing Adventure! Teams of six had to get together and complete several activities. We had several privileges taken from us – 2 people were mute, 2 people were blind, and 2 people could not use their hands in the activities. Only the blind people could touch the materials, so the others had to lead and direct those blind people in order to complete a task. It was really fun and eye-opening to a life where people had physical disabilities. We also felt a little helpless when we had to depend on others leading us. We learned to appreciate our God-given gifts of being able.

The fourth activity was the hand paper activity. During this activity we were asked to trace one of our hands on construction paper and write what we bring to our family, friends, community, school and church on the fingers. In the middle of the palm, we wrote a prayer asking God to bless and watch over us. After completing the hands, our retreat leader glued all of the hands together, and created a wreath. During this activity, we learned that we all are important individually but together we can make something beautiful.

Our last and final activity was the star activity. Here we had an inspiring, beautiful talk about how we are stars but over the years we may have bad days and sometimes we get all folded up. We all received paper stars and wrote what we would like to do better. Then we folded our stars and placed them in our palms. One by one we placed our stars in bowls of water faced up so the folded points were facing the ceiling. After placing our stars in the water they started to open gradually symbolizing that even though we have bad days we can open up again.

We wrapped up the retreat with a message to go on our way and find what we could do to impact the world. Thank you St. Joseph’s Salesian Center and to our retreat leader for a very inspiring retreat!