12 outdoor activities you’ll want to do all summer long
Take your unit meeting outside
Throw open the doors, grab the sunscreen (or waterproof) and head into the great outdoors
We asked you to vote on the activity ideas you'd like us to share in our next blog. You voted for ideas to get girls outside. So with the great British summer now in full swing (complete with sun AND rain), here’s our pick of easy outside activities that you can do during a meeting.
Got an outdoor activity idea? Tell us on Facebook and Twitter.
Sharpen up your survival skills
Help girls to build their survival skills without venturing too far from your meeting place.
1. Pioneering
Build a shelter, bridge a stream or craft your own camping chair – how big or small you go is up to you. Pioneering is a classic guiding activity all about working in teams to use wood, knots and lashes to build structures. You’ll need a good side order of imagination and problem solving too.
Find out about pioneering
2. An easy intro to orienteering
Fancy orienteering but time and space limited? Play this fun game to help girls remember the points of the compass and introduce the skill of orienteering without having to venture too far.
3. Find and cook your food
Get girls to work in teams and use a compass to find their dinner - and then use a campfire to cook it. The winning team is the one who finds and cooks their food first - dinner’s never been more competitive!
4. Stay safe in the sun
Learn how sun screen works with this easy science experiment that will help girls stay safe in the sun.
Spending time outside plays a really important part in children’s health and development. Guiding has always been a great way to get girls outside. Now with children spending more time indoors, getting girls outside is more important than ever.
Connect with nature
Whether you’re in the city centre or a rural retreat, there’s lots of ways to discover nature all around you.
5. Tree identity parade
Know your oaks from your planes? Your ash from your birch? Put girls tree knowledge to the test with this tree identity parade activity. You can do it anywhere you can find trees – from woods to local streets.
6. Plant walk
Now you’re a tree expert, take a closer look at the plants that are all around us too. Can you find a heart shaped leaf? How about a flower shaped like a bell? Get girls to take photos or draw pictures of the plants they find.
7. Get your hands dirty
Challenge younger girls to discover nature through touch – and to get their hands dirty too - as they feel and find natural objects in buckets of mud.
8. Faux fossils
Find a natural object and make a fossil of it in clay. Look for objects that make interesting patterns – such as ferns or feathers.
Running wild
Playing games outside is what summer's all about.
9. Make the ultimate obstacle course
Get girls to design and create their own obstacle courses and then see if they can take it on! Get creative with newspaper stepping stones or groundsheet slippery slides.
Get more ideas in Assault courses are fun!
10. Will the fox ever catch the gosling?
A super fun and energetic game that will gets girls moving as the fox tries to catch one of the goslings.
How to play fox and goose games
11. Right on target
Use chalk to draw numbers on the floor and then see if girls can hit the numbers with mini bean bags – how many can you get on target?
12. Footprint challenge
Can you guess whose footprint is whose? The perfect game for when there’s a bit of rain and mud!
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