This week’s theme:

Adventures to the outdoors – Camping

This week’s colouring in sheet:

Download and print this week’s colouring sheet here. This weeks features tents under the constellations of Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra and Hercules.

 

Activities for the week:

 

Fact of the week: Thomas Hiram Holding is considered the founder of modern camping and wrote the first edition of The Camper’s Handbook in 1908.

 

Activity 1:

Try coming up with some verses of your own and actions to go with these classic camping songs: She’ll be coming round the mountain, Oh Suzanna, and Home, home on the range.

Try accompanying some of these songs to sing around a campfire with body percussion, or natural percussion, such as tapping rocks, stones, logs, and sticks together: Take me Home Country Roads, American Pie, Horse with no name, and Ring of Fire.

 

Activity 2:

When you’re camping in the great outdoors, away from towns and cities there’s less light pollution so you’re more able to see the stars. Try some Stargazing by looking at the shapes of constellations and seeing if you can make the shapes with your body.

Try stretching your arms out like Cygnus

Make a ‘W’ with your hands or arms like Cassiopeia

Curve your back like Ursa Minor

Curl your bicep like Scorpius

Make a house shape like Auriga

What other constellation shapes can you make with your body?

 

Activity 3:

Camping in the USA and Canada often means camping in bear territory; black and brown bears will likely keep their distance from you, but Grizzly Bears won’t.

Act like a hungry grizzly bear. Growl and bear your claws and teeth. Draw some bear footprints so you know what to look out for.

There are ways to avoid bear attacks when camping – check for bear tracks at your potential camp site, if you see any, don’t camp there! Hang your food in trees to they can’t smell it. If a bear approaches you, avoid eye contact and back away slowly. Don’t turn your back to the bear or run away, running will make the bear chase you. Be loud and clang pots. Come up with actions for all of these responses.

 

Activity 4:

Finding a good place to camp – looking at different environments, why might they be good or bad? In a forest. In the desert. By a lake. On a mountain. In your back garden

Make a den using your sofa and blankets to pitch up to camp in the location that you think is the best environment.

 

Activity 5:

Sometimes when you’re camping you have to be resourceful and imaginative as you can’t carry everything and the kitchen sink with you, so have to make-do with what’s around you. Let’s pack a camping bag. You have 1 minute each to: Find something in your room to use as a pillow; then something to use as a plate; something to use as a spoon; something to protect you from rain; something to catch a leak in your tent; something to hammer in a tent peg in with.

 

Activity 6:

Try making an origami tent like this.

Make a tent with craft sticks like this.

Make a twig tepee that you can cover with cloth (eg a facecloth, handkerchief, etc).

 

Activity 7:

Use a glass jar, tissue paper and an LED candle or torch to make a glowing campfire to toast cotton wool marshmallows on.

Make a banjo to play around your campfire – you could try putting elastic bands around a plastic tub, loaf tin, or tissue box. Or, try loom bands around a jar lid.

 

Activity 8:

Read, or ask somebody to read to you this campfire poem. It’s made up of Onomatopoeia. Words that are onomatopoeic imitate the sound that they describe. Make the sounds as the words appear in the poem. Come up with actions for the poem.

 

Activity 9:

Write a Camping Acrostic Poem. Spell out the word ‘Camping’ and use your senses to fill in the blanks here to make your very own camping poem.

 

Activity 10:

There’s loads of Scout badges you can get when camping, such as the ‘Outdoor Challenge Award’, the ‘Camper Activity Badge’, the ‘Forester Activity Badge’ etc. Draw some ‘alternative’ Scout badges that you’d get for doing well at home, or at Purple Patch. Do you think you deserve to be awarded any specific badges for surviving in lockdown? Draw your badges.

 

Homework: Make a postcard from your camping trip. What will you draw on the front? What will your message about your camping trip say? Who would you send the postcard to?

 

Why not take a photo of any of the activities you’ve tried this week and share it with us? You can share it on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!