Outdoor orienteering games

You can always get directions by asking someone else or on the Internet. Everyone is going to have different likes and dislikes in compass orienteering games.

What works for one person may not work for another. Compass orienteering games can be a great way to pass the time when there is nothing else to do. You may have your own personal favorites, but if you are interested in these types of games, there are a lot of options to choose from. Orienteering t-shirts Orienteering was invented in the mid-nineteenth century by a Swedish army officer named Major Ernst Killander. Read more….

It is best Read more…. The organization is Read more…. Orienteering t-shirts. Hydro Jacket. If the team member goes to the correct point, they will be awarded 2 points, and will be allowed to shoot.

If the team member makes a basket, they will be awarded 1 additional point. After all team members have taken the agreed upon number of turns, tally the score for each team. The team with the most points wins. This compass game can be tailored to kids with various levels of compass familiarity.

For this game you'll need a compass, place marker, and direction sheet for each participating team. Divide your group into teams of about 3 each. Now, when creating your directions sheet, the key is to make sure they will lead your teams back to the point where they started. This is how you'll know whether they followed the directions correctly.

Like we mentioned earlier, you can cater your direction sheet to the level of your kids by using only cardinal directions for beginners, cardinal and ordinal directions for intermediate difficulty, and bearings for more advanced children.

A beginner's direction sheet might look something like this: 1. Take 5 steps South. Take 10 steps East. Take 20 steps North. Take 15 steps West. Take 15 steps South. Take 5 steps East. Take a bearing of degrees, then take 20 steps in that direction. Take a bearing of 45 degrees, then take 28 steps in that direction. Take a bearing of degrees, then take 28 steps in that direction.

Take a bearing of 90 degrees, then take 28 steps in that direction. I finally pulled the trigger and signed up for the event on Sunday. I watched a YouTube video on the basics of orienteering, but honestly I had no idea what to expect. I knew I liked to be outdoors, so I thought this seemed like a natural activity. My son had purchased an orienteering compass in February, so we piled into the car with the compass, of course and were on our way to Lake Needwood in Maryland. There are different orienteering course levels that are color-coded.

Courses range from white very easy to blue most advanced. There are many levels in between. Orienteering courses are located in wooded areas, like state and local parks. Controls can be found alongside a trail or deep in a forested section. Control locations are ordered and marked on the paper map. An orienteering compass helps you to quickly find the precise location so you can e-punch each control. It was honestly really fun and a great way to make hiking a little more exciting for kids who are generally hiking-averse like mine can be at times.

When you find and sign up for an orienteering event, you will need to choose a course to complete. As I noted above, white is very easy and for absolute beginners. White courses are short, no more than km. The course we completed at Lake Needwood was 2. It was also entirely on-trail. A compass was hardly required. On the map, paths and roads are indicated by symbols, as are uncrossable rivers and impassable cliffs.

Thankfully, the latter two features were not on our course. We had an orienteering compass, but really, since all the checkpoints were on-trail, we hardly used it at all. From time to time, I would use the compass on my iPhone. From here, the next orienteering course is the yellow course.

Yellow is a good orienteering course for kids, too. The yellow course is also one that may not require much use of a compass. However, once you get to orange — for the immediate orienteer — a compass is a must-have. Anything above orange is for advanced orienteers, including brown, green, red and blue.