Camping trip activities for Cub and Boy Scouts to improve the outdoor program and make the most of the camping experience.
Show Notes:
Transcript:
The planning of the activities on a camping trip traditionally falls to the Senior Patrol Leader and his leadership staff. But we have all been on trips when the planning process isn’t exactly fully thought through.
Prior to any camping trip, the adult leadership should be talking over the upcoming trip with the senior patrol and making sure the appropriate planning has taken place.
These 10 activity tips can help fill the extra program time without a ton of pre-planning. This of course doesn’t mean no planning, as all of the items requires some forethought.
Activity number one.
Explore the camping location. This is usually a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many times it is not done. Many camping locations, especially council camps have lots of activities that can be arranged. Many of these simply require just asking, although some might have small fees involved.
Council camps usually will have designated areas for COPE, shooting sports, water sports geocaching, and orienteering trails, some may even have maps and guides just for the asking.
So take a few minutes, do some research and take advantage of the local offerings where you can.
Activity number two: Troop hiking.
Many locations have designated trails, and can let you and the scouts explore and may even knock off the hike requirement if the course is long enough.
Activity number three: Sketching or Photographing Nature
This one is a favorite of mine, because most have never done it, and gives you a great opportunity to commune with nature, take some photos, or get some paper and pencils and draw plants, leaves and landscapes. Most often in the woods you spend time doing things to concur the outdoors, this lets you be a part of it.
Activity number four: Stargazing
You don’t need to be an expert to take advantage of looking up into the sky at night. There are lots of great phone apps and star charts you can use to help scouts orient themselves in the the universe amongst the stars.
Activity number five: Camp Service
Scouting is all about giving back, and a great way to do this is to speak to the campmaster or ranger on site about small projects that can be done with whatever timeframe you are looking to fill. This is one our troop does often with sites we use habitually.
Invariably when looking around our site, you see a big ant hill where the fire pit is, with ash and burnt wood that adds to the pile with every use. Clearing out the old ash and dispursing it over a wide area in the woods helps bring nutrients to the soil and improves the campsite for you and those that come after you.
Activity number six: Fire Wood Collection
This is a great one to get all the scouts involved and teach a little on preparing fire. Most often when scouts go off to get wood they bring back big logs, that the believe will magically turn to fire wood. Instructing them on the three types of materials necessary to build a fire, kindling, tinder and fuel, lets you easily break up the group into three that each has a separate mission to achieving the fire building goal.
Activity number seven: Reading aloud as a group
This one is another of my favorites, but may seem a little weird.
Sitting in a group and taking turns reading out of the same book, builds lots of skills, First of course is reading comprehension, but past that it is building presentation skills, as they can get more comfortable speaking in front of a group.
Now, it doesn’t have to be long passages, a few sentences can do per person, and you can make this a reoccurring troop activity continuing where you left off on the next trip.
Activity number eight: Whittling
Knife skills are one of those skills the scouts are always interested in and rarely have dedicated time to work on. Usually, there’s effort for scouts to earn toten chip, but then after they have accomplished the goal, it’s not reinforced.
Skills need to be in continuous use to become proficient, and having some time with a targeted task lets scouts practice, and have adults on hand to monitor and guide as necessary without all the hand holding done when earning totem chip initially.
Activity number nine: Classic board games
It would amaze you how many scouts have never played battleship, monopoly or risk. Games like these let you use mental skills and participate in a group activitiy that is fun and to them – unique
And finally, activity number ten: Requirement sign off
Having dedicated time for scouts to work with scouts and adults to work with scouts to work through requirements specific to the outdoors lets scouts advance and encourages continuation in the program.
If you liked this list, check out an expanded version of 22 items from a recent roundtable presentation I gave in the show notes on ScoutmasterDave.com for this video. Look it over hand it to the scouts, and hopefully improve your outdoor adventure.
Take what you like and leave the rest, and as we say in Woodbadge, feedback is a gift, leave yours below in the comments, with the hope we can all learn together.
I’m Scoutmaster Dave, and this was 10 camping trip activities.
