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Forest Games

Outdoor Education: Forest Adventure Games
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Forest games are ideal to experience a sense of community spirit, experience teamwork and that for every age. The intended educational objective depends primarily on the age of participants. The spectrum of possibilities ranges from simple games proofing one's knowledge to extensive adventures that are designed to strengthen the team spirit.

Discover the forest as a habitat

The typical scavenger hunt is a favorite forest game for groups with younger participants. They are required to experience the forest as a habitat. That means they have to explore the forest’s animals and plants. Such “expeditions” can be organized by the youth worker on numerous adventure trails or National Parks. The participants learn about the forest habitat thereby immediately expanding their knowledge base. The supervisor can organise those games in form of a competition where the best team receives a small prize. This teaches participants as young as in Elementary Age that it's worthwhile working together to achieve a common goal.

Forest Outdoor Education | ©: www.youthwork-practice.com

Children and young people can playfully learn about the forest and its inhabitants. They learn through joint adventures/activities such as night walks. Through the latter, they get to know the forest from a new perspective. Many forest dwellers are nocturnal and are rarely or not at all, seen during daytime. The youth worker can make this adventure more exciting by letting the kids guess the sounds of the nightly forest.

The community spirit is, at these forest adventures, absolute priority. Also, participants can learn to overcome fears or disgust - for example when they discover cobwebs or rotting plants in the woods.

Outdoor Education in the forest
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The forest as a playground

If the participants are already too old and have outgrown simple forest games, the youth worker could prepare a joint project. For example, the young people could build something together. Examples could be: a cottage, a playground, or a bivouac is ideal. These community activities offer, besides the learning effect, additional positive aspects of their social behaviour.

The learning effect arises from the fact that the young people are building something with expert guidance. Also to the proper use of natural materials, they train their technical skills and experience how this particular piece of work comes together – from the planning right down to the finishing.

Here also comes the community spirit into play. The experience to have fulfilled something together. Something that is useful and will be used at the same time. Ideally, the group leader ensures that small groups respectively take on a particular task. Hence, the participants will motivate each other to work on a certain project until it is completed. There are always little setbacks because things just don’t work the way they were supposed to. In this instance, it is up to the youth worker to step in and help the group to analyse where the mistake was made. The young people, as well as the youth worker, can then work together on the solution; and more so, how future errors can be avoided. Almost playfully, they young people learn logical, analytical and solution oriented thinking.

Forest Games

Discover the forest as a habitat

The forest as a playground

More informations and ideas concerning outdoor education