Hiking Skills for Cubs: Day Camp Day 4

Ever announced that you were going to be leading a group of kids on a hike and had your ears accosted with groans and whines and all manner of under-breath grumbles? Unfortunately for me, I have a few too many times. Although I have yet to figure out just where some kids have gotten this negative stigma to the word 'hike' (my own kids beg to go on hikes, so I just don't get it), I have found that children often can use the help of a motivator to make a walk through the woods something less of a chore.

So for my last day of the Cub Skills station at camp I came prepared to motivate the boys toward enjoying our 1 mile hike. First, I had pre-hiked the path and found a cool destination that could be used as the end of our trail. A spillway for the resivoir's dam with some neat climbing rocks on the bank of the river. Score! I also created a hiking bingo game for the boys to bring on the hike, which conveniently listed many trees and birds which they needed to be able to identify to earn the Hiking pin. How very sneaky of me to include requirements in something billed as a 'fun' activity!

Click image to download printable PDF.

But I had an even better secret weapon to get the boys excited about the hike. I brought with me many small tubs filled with various goodies and some small plastic baggies. Before each group sallied forth they got to make their very own trail mix to enjoy on the walk. You've never seen kids so excited to put scoops of pretzels, Goldfish and M&M's into a baggie before. I don't think I heard a single grumble or complaint about starting the hike since they had one hand in their snack mix and the other on their bingo sheet and pencil. Conveniently, the character trait the camp was focusing on that day happened to be posotive attitiude too, which I happily reminded the boys of before the hike and hinted that those exemplifying that trait might just walk back with an extra spirit token or two.

We happliy walked the rocky path, the boys excitedly checking things off their bingo sheets, including many things that apparently ONLY they could see. I tried not to mind the obvious cheating and told myself they were only trying to please me and themselves. When we reached the spillway and rocks, the expressions on their faces was priceless. There's something about kids and runnign water that makes them stare in awe. After a group picture and a short break to eat more trail mix and point out some nearby poison ivy, the hike back went just a smoothly and pleasently as the hike down. I'm not sure who was more proud of themselves, me or the boys. I also passed out information sheets for the Virginia State Parks Trail Quest program to those boys who were interested in getting the pin for that day's hike.

Five group hikes in one day, and no memorable complaints to speak of. In fact, every boy seemed to have a truly great time and was all smiles after leaving my station. If that's not a testament to how much kids can actually enjoy hiking then I don't know what else to do to help. Dare I say even the parent chaperones, one of which blatently had said he hated hiking, thouroughly enjoyed themselves on the walk. I truly hope that the week's activities and the culmination of the short hike will inspire more of those kids to get outside and walk some trails with their Dens and family members.

One of the groups at the "end" of the trail. Can you tell they had fun?

Hiking Skills for Cubs: Day Camp Day 3

Day three of my experience leading a station at Cub Day Camp was the one that left me the most fearful, mainly due to the fact that I was treading in waters unknown, at least for me. In an effort to gain some 'cool' factor points with the kids and also help them to know that hiking isn't necessarily just a boring walk in the woods, I decided to create a mini geocaching hunt for the boys to experience on their own. Sounds like fun, huh? But truthfully, I had never actually geocached before. I had once borrowed a GPS unit and planned to go geocaching at a family camping trip we did over the summer, but my oldest ended up getting sick and we spent more time just sitting in camp than we had planned. So, even though I knew how it worked, I was deathly afraid that I'd forget a step or do somehow do something wrong. Even more frightening was the fact that some of the parent chaperones actually HAD been geocaching, and I didn't want to be 'called out' on a faux pas in front of the boys!


On day two I had taken some time during lunch break to hide my cache, complete with enough prizes for all. A friend, the same one that lent me her personal GPS earlier in the year for our unsuccessful trip, miraculously was able to come up with a whole SET of GPS units, six identical ones, and after reading the manual at least 5 times over, I took a few readings from where I had hidden my Cub Cache. Luckily they were all very close, so first hurdle seemed to be crossed. The night before the big day I took some time to program all the units with the secret cache's co-ordinates and make sure they all seemed to be working proplerly. Then it was off for a poor nights sleep of wondering what I was thinking to plan such an activity. Boys wandering lost through the woods for days did cross my poor, exhausted brain on more than one occasion.

The session on this third day began with an explanation of the Earth's magnetic poles and all the kids got to use a compass. They learned how to align it to north, then find directions and headings. Then the true fun began. I handed each of the adult chaperones a pre-programmed GPS unit and paired the boys off. Each adult took two (or sometimes three) boys out at a time to find the hidden cache. The remaining boys got to make their own compasses using a needle and magnet (a VERY cool project to show the Earth's magnatism) and also draw maps of their neighborhoods noting several locations near their homes. To my relief, the first groups came back beaming with their prizes - SILLY BANDS! The rest of the day went off without a hitch, and I'm happy to say that all the boys found the cache and no one was left wandering around the park that night.

Showing off their prizes after finding the cache!

Geocaching was probably the highlight of the Skills station for many of those boys. I'm so glad I went out on a limb and did the activity! Boys and treasure hunting go together like marshmallows and chocolate, its a natural pairing. My hope is that at least a few of the boys went home and told their parents what fun geocaching was and that they and their families will try it out on their own, searching for real caches and having a blast outside.

Hiking Skills for Cubs: Day Camp Day 2

The second day of Cub Day Camp at my Cub Skills station was, in my opinion, a much more fun day than the first. How excited I was when, in reading over the Hiking pin award requirements, I saw the phrase "Learn trail signs." Wow, did the memories of my own dventures at Girl Scout camp come flooding back. I can vividly recall learning and making trails with only rocks and twigs, and setting up trails for my friends to follow to a hidden "treasure." If I could still remember that experience and several of the signs themselves, then surely it was worth passing on to the boys.

As I often do, I spent a rediculous amount of time researching my topic, trail signs, on the internet, but failed to come up with a sheet I could give the boys to learn and follow in creating their own trails. Perhaps I'm too much of a perfectionist, but it seems like this is almost always the outcome whenever I go searching for informative hand outs. So, as I often have done, I ended up making my own trail sign chart, complete with my own quick drawings of the signs. I think it turned out pretty decently, if I do say so myself!

Click image to download printable PDF

In my original planning, trail signs was all I had put on the schedule for day 2, however after seeing the limited space we had to work with and finding out just how L-O-N-G 45 minutes in the heat could be on the first day, I realized I would need something else to fill about 15-20 minutes more of the session. So was born my talk on common poisonous plants of Virginia. Again not finding what I wanted online, I made up my own small handout of the four "biggies" in our area: Poison Ivy, Poison Oak, Poison Sumac, and Stinging Nettle. Of course, it figures that I gave this talk on day 2, after several kids already had to be sent home with the infmous itchy poision ivy rash.

Well, the boys each got a trail sign hand out and split into groups to create their own trails, complete with a hidden message of their choosing at the end. I was pleased that they seemed to really have fun making and following eachother's paths. Plus I got to sit down and take a break while they did all the 'work!' True to my hunch, there was about 15 minutes left to fill with my poison plant talk, so I gave them all the second handout and told them about the plant and where to find them. I then held up photos (taken off the internet) of various plants and asked them to try and identify them using the hand out. I even threw in some non-poisionous imposters to really test them out. Surprisingly, this part of the session seemed to really keep the boys engaged and was not nearly as dull to them as I had feared.

A trail sign for a giant to follow?

For my first time ever leading a real program with a large group, I seemed to be off to a pretty great start! Two days down, two to go!