The Ultimate at-Home ‘CAMP OUT’!!

 

What: An at-home
‘camping’ experience, including a cook-out, sleep-out and ‘camp’ activities!

Where: From your home –
backyard, courtyard, grass space, family room – whatever space you can access!

Who: You AND encourage
your family to join! You’ll take care of the planning and they get to
participate in the fun!

When: Any
night(s) between _______, depending on your schedule (and perhaps weather?).

Assignment write-up due: ______

CAMPING
FUN:

We’re sure
you and your family are feeling ‘cooped up’. Let’s change the scenery, put our
outdoor skills back into practice and come up with a fun way to spend an
evening (or two?!) outdoors, in the ‘The Ultimate at-home Camp Out’.

You decide
the evening(s), location (ideally outdoors, but if you don’t have access to
outdoor space then get creative inside) and be resourceful with the equipment
you have. You all have your OE sleeping bags, so that’s a great start!

Shelter: Create some sort of shelter for
your ‘camp-out’. Have access to a tent? Set it up! What about a tarp? If so,
hang a tarp and practice your knots! No tarp or other improvised shelter
materials (large sheet, etc)? Let me know and I will drop a tarp off at your
house.

Cook-out: Get creative and simulate outdoor
cooking as best as possible! Try to do two meals if you can – Dinner and
Breakfast. Perhaps you have a camp stove at home? Or outdoor BBQ? Or fire pit?
Simulate what the prep, cook

ing, meal time, and clean-up would look/feel like
during camping. Get online and check out some blogs for meal ideas! You can
have those camping with you hel

p, but you are ‘master chef’ on this one, so do
your meal planning, purchasing, prep, and cooking – keep those skills sharp! ????

 

Skills:
Part of this ‘Camp-out’
experience is to reintroduce you to some of the outdoor skills you have learned
and practiced this year. Your goal is to include a minimum of 3
‘skill sessions’ in your camping experience (feel free to do more!). Perhaps
this is just you practicing on your own? Perhaps it is you teaching others in
your family? Come up with some creative ways to incorporate skill building into
your camping experience. You will be reporting back in your assignment
write-up.

Possible Skills to explore:

 

·
Shelter
Building –
required (mentioned above)

·
Cooking
– required
(mentioned above)

·
Knots – bowline, truckers hitch, clovehitch, trucker’s hitch, taut-line hitch, reef knot or square knot, others? Set
up your tent, tarp, cooking shelter, etc practicing these knots. Show/teach
others?

·
Navigation – basic route planning, map
scales, contour lines, reading your compass, taking a bearing, following a
bearing, pacing, etc. Create a game using the compass (& map if you have)? Map
shapes? Design an orienteering challenge around your neighbourhood? Discover
some near-by Geocaches?

·
Fire–Building – *Safety first! Only
if this is safe/appropriate for your circumstance. Can you put the skills
Delmar taught you into practice building a crackling campfire?

·
Wood
Whittling –
*Safety first! Only if you have the tools to carve safely. Remember your
beautiful spoons ????
…perhaps you can make a new creation and share your skills with others.

·
Minimal
Impact Camping  – required. Practice those ‘leave no trace’
practices & help teach others!

·
Others?

 

*Plan your skill sessions and feel
free to use online resources ahead of time to help as needed (Youtube to remind
you of Knots, Geocaching App for cache searches, Compass on your smartphone to
practice Navigation (if you don’t have a compass).

 

Activities:  Time
to get creative and include some other ‘activities’ into your Ultimate
Camp-out. Time spent journaling will be required and will help to provide the
time and space for reflection and connection to the outdoors. In addition to
this, please feel free to add in all sorts of other fun games & activities.
Try for a minimum of 2 additional activities.

Possible Activities to include:

 

·
Journaling
(*Required – please complete an entry in your OE Journal – anything you’d like
to write about!)

·
‘Campfire’
sing-along (with instruments?!)

·
Plant/Tree
ID – notice what’s growing in your neighbourhood

·
Nature
walk (take some time to get ‘grounded’ and reconnect with nature)

·
Star
gazing (put your Science lessons into application!)

·
Story
telling (oohhhhh… who can tell the best ghost story?!)

·
Drawing
(sketch some new outdoor scenes)

·
Photography
(get up close & personal with nature)

·
Geocaching
(discover new caches near you)

·
Card
games (always a classic!)

·
Active
games (depending on space & your company)

·
Others?
The sky is the limit…Get creative!

Putting
it all together

Spend some
time brainstorming and planning your ‘Ultimate at-home Camp-out’ experience.
Connect with your family and try to get them involved. Perhaps you want to
coordinate your camp-out on the same night as other OE students?! You could
share ideas/activities and encourage each other (from a distance of course!).

**As usual when we are camping, the hope
is to reconnect with the outdoors, spend some quality time in nature, enjoy the
serenity and in this instance, practice some OE skills and have fun with at-home
camping activities. As
such, we want to limit/eliminate screen time! You may need your
phone to take pictures (see requirement below), or to use as a compass, but the
goal is to DISCONNECT
FROM TECHNOLOGY during this ‘Camp-out’ experience. Challenge
yourself to leave your phone inside and not use it for most/all of your camping
experience (or at least put into airplane mode). Could you go 24hours without
using your phone? Challenge yourself!

The
Ultimate at-Home ‘Camp-Out’ Write-up:

At the
conclusion of your ‘Camp-out’ experience, you will complete a write-up and
include photos to submit to Teams. Please use proper sentence structure and
paragraph form in your assignment write-up. Include the following:

–
Describe
a brief overview of your camp location, set-up, participants, shelter set-up

–
Describe
a brief overview of your meal planning and camp cooking

–
Describe
a minimum of 3 skill building sessions, including which skills you focused on,
why, and how

–
Describe
a minimum of 2 camp activities that you included in the experience

–
Describe
a highlight of this ‘camp-out’ experience and a challenge you faced

–
How’d
you go without your phone? How long did you ‘disconnect’? What do you think the
benefit might be of disconnecting from technology at times?

–
Take
photos (or videos) of the following:  i)
shelter set-up ii) your meal prep/cooking iii) at least 2 of your ‘skill sessions’
iv) at least 1 of your ‘camp activities’ v) anything else you’d like to include.
These photos (videos) should be included in your post ‘camp-out’ write up or
attached with this document in Teams. ‘A picture is worth a thousand
words’.

–
Include
anything else you would like to share ????

Join
the Movement!

Others
around the province are also encouraging at-home ‘Camping’ experiences. Check
out these links for ‘tips & tricks’, and opportunities to get involved if
you like (i.e – contest through MEC, can donate through BCCDC, etc)

MEC: ‘The
Big Camp-in’ – May.11-18^th:
https://www.mec.ca/en/article/how-to-create-the-ultimate-campout-at-home?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=organic_social&utm_campaign=camp_backyardfun&utm_term=thebigcampin_giveaway

BCCDC
Foundation for Public Health: ‘The BC Stay-at-Home Camp Out’: https://bccdcfoundation.org/bc-stay-at-home-campout/