games for teenagers to play in the woods

[woodland dweller]

hi all, i have the local youth club coming over for an evening of fun in the woods. I'm looking for suggestions for games they can play, they range from

10 to 16 year old and about 30 in total, girls and boys. Shall be doing hot

dogs on the open fire for them and will get the pizza oven fired up.

[ArthurBottlesworth]

Thats brave!

[jomoco]

We had a game played within the boundaries of a park where half the players had nerf footballs and were hunters of the other players who tried to evade the hunters. Once an evader was hit with a nerf football he became a hunter also. Whoever managed to evade the hunters for the time set for each game won the game for his team. The hunters won if all the evaders were hit by a nerf football.

 

Of course trees climbed within the park boundaries were good places to hide, particularly tall ones. My brother was fond of carrying a hollow length of bamboo stalk when playing on the evader team, which he used to breathe through when hiding in the park's lake. At least until we finally caught onto his ruse after losing too many games in a row to such sneaky and devious tactics.

 

Might be too dangerous for teens these days though....

 

Jomoco

[treequip]

hi all, i have the local youth club coming over for an evening of fun in the woods. I'm looking for suggestions for games they can play, they range from

10 to 16 year old and about 30 in total, girls and boys. Shall be doing hot

dogs on the open fire for them and will get the pizza oven fired up.

 

Hide the grub in the woods and give them a map to find it orienteering style or place the food in a place where they have to work co operatively to get at it

[TGB]

Take photos of different barks and leaves at given locations. Then mark locations on simple A4 maps. Get them to wander the mapped area and describe/photo the bark or leaves, (and maybe note the colour of a tied piece of rope or other) at the given points. Then later while they're gathered in a designated spot, you can openly judge who got the most right.

 

Don't tag the locations, as someone might move the tag. But do give a brief description as to what the location looks like, e.g. Large fallen tree on your left and water running over small stones on right, target is thickest standing tree within 5m.

 

Don't set the course in a natural progression or where one location can clearly be seen from its neighbour. Do tell them on the map or by description let them know the total number of targets/locations but don't number them. This will encourage each individual/pair to gain the next location along their own chosen route. And instead of the course becoming a follow the leader, should have people moving in all directions at once. Setting them off at 30-40sec. intervals will help disseminate them. Plus if there's any queries, these can be explained or hinted at during the interval.

 

Also, ask them to describe something they'd either not seen/heard before or something they'd not seen/heard this year.

 

If you have anyone who's got learning difficulties and or will have problems negotiating the terrain. Pair up the whole group, so that those that may have added difficulty are not singled out. A time limit will have to be set but try not to make it a race. As this could directly lead to injury and favour the physically fittest among the group.

Edited May 1, 2014 by TGB

[davetaz]

Slacklining

Slackline.com: Leading the Balance Sport Revolution - Welcome

[AcaciaRental]

If the trees in the area are quite diverse, you could give them a piece of paper with the shape of some leaves and the name of the trees, and get them to try and find the leaf that fits each picture, teach them tree identification!

 

TGB's safety points are obviously relevant again for this one!

[woodland dweller]

Thank for the replies so far. The woods are an ex forestry commission

Douglas fir plantation so its fairly featureless and uniform, although their

are some good hardwoods the remains of the old wood. We would like

to keep the kids all together around the camp fire area. As its 25 acres we did

not want to loose any. Already have a slack line course set up for our kids.

Last year we pinned 20 questions to some trees in a marked area, so they

had to find the questions to answer them. The thing they liked the best was

a fir i cut down over the track which they could jump up and down on to get

it to bounce, 30 kids bouncing on a tree was fun.

[HGBMX]

Give them a couple saws and get them cutting

[Justme]

Look up "low ropes" games or course for loads of ideas.