Camp Opemikon Compass Challenge

This weekend we took our Beaver Colony (ages 5 through 7, with some 8 year olds depending on birthdates) to Camp Opemikon - arrived Friday evening and left this morning. I have a lot more to write about our trip, but for the moment I only want to scribe a bit about the Compass Challenge that I came up with as an activity for the boys. Earlier this year we did a bit of compass work with the boys - but at this age anything too complicated can be hit-and-miss. A few of the older boys got it no problem, so I wanted to take the opportunity to do an exercise on compass work while we were at camp. This was my first time at Opemikon, so there was not much I was able to do in advance to prepare for it Hopefully this article will be useful to someone else in my position, in the future.

One of the things I've been trying to do this year is have activities that the older boys can learn quickly and then teach to the younger ones. Scouting is supposed to be in part about leadership, and I think this is a good way to try to teach it to the boys. It is also a useful tool because the other boys seem to behave better when it is one of their peers trying to lead them through an activity, so it is also a bit self-serving. We had about 90 minutes of free time in the program first thing Saturday morning, so I took my 2 boys on a walk through the woods to map out a course. My oldest son is 8 and is a "silver tail" Beaver, which means he is actually of Cub age but still going to beavers. In our case our troop does not have Cubs because we did not have enough interest this year at that age. My son should have "swum up" to cubs about 2 months ago. In any case I lead them through a quick 15 minute course, taking notes as we went along. I then found the other 3 silver tails in our colony and lead them each through it 1 by 1, in most cases with their father tagging along. 2 of the 4 boys got it right away, and later went on to do a very good job of leading their peers through the course, explaining things to them as they went along. As I told the Silvers when I was showing them the course, I did not want them to give the answers to the other Beavers, but rather wanted them to help the other Beavers find the answers themselves.

Here are the details of the course I mapped out, if you wanted to plan for it in the future. This should probably be cleaned up a bit by a Scouter with a better command of the compass, since I may not be too exacting in my bearings. I was just being very rough considering the age group. There are 4 questions below that the Beavers had to answer when the Silver Tail led them through the course, and when I reviewed the answers afterwards they all got pretty close!

This course starts at the foot of the front steps of Barker Lodge.

• Set your compass for north, and then find the 110 degree bearning
• follow this bearing until you find a path through the woods
• follow the path until it comes to a T / Y
• stand in the middle of the T / Y, and record the bearning of the right branch ( Answer: 110 )
• take the right branch and follow it til the next T / Y
• stand in the middle of the T / Y and find the bearing of the right branch ( Answer : 220 )
• take the right branch and proceed until you find the first "No Trespassing" sign on the left (Note: the sign refers to the "low ropes" course, which is suitable for Cub aged kids but only with proper supervision. Stopping here has the side benefit of explaining the sign to the boys).
• stand in front of the sign and find the tire. What is the bearing to the tire? ( Answer : 310 )
• Proceed to the end of the path and find the tree with the blue X ( Note: there was a tree with a small piece of plywood nailed to it, and the plywood had been weathered until it was completely blank. So I made an X on it with a Sharpie ). Standing in front of the X, what is the bearing of the path you just came down?
• proceed back to camp (they are now on the main road back to their lodge so the path back is pretty obvious)

As I'd mentioned, 2 of the 4 Silvers got the whole compass work immediately. A few of the other boys sort of got it. We did it in 4 heats, one heat for each Silver to lead. The Silver had his father with him to help him lead the other Beavers through the course (the father had been briefed on basic compass work beforehand). Each heat took about 15 minutes. You have to start each heat about 10 minutes apart, so have some general field games ready for the boys waiting to go out, and for those who have already returned.