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CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE
Three Seasons of Activities
Fall Program
Colour the fall experience at Tawingo…Red…and Yellow…and Orange! With your return
to the school, autumn is the time to lay a foundation for the year ahead. The natural world
is in transition as plants and animals prepare for the winter ahead. Hike along leafy trails;
absorb the peace of sun-filled, colour palette of leaves; participate in a seasonal study;
build a team and prepare for your winter ahead. You can set expectations, get to know your group and
develop leadership principles in a beautiful setting away from school
Winter Program
Colour the winter experience white….the winter outdoor adventure is like no other! It
divides up the school year perfectly and permits plenty of time for in-class preparation and
in-class follow-up. The Muskoka winter offers wonderful experiences in physical activity
(skiing, snow shoeing, skating) but other winter subjects are just as bountiful. Micro-climate
studies, toboggan physics, heritage skills are all great ways to immerse your class in the season. End
the day with a night ski, a bonfire and hot chocolate.
Spring Program
Colour a spring at Tawingo … Green! The spring marks a new beginning and a time of
renewed activity in both the natural world and in school. For classes looking to round out
their year together, there is no better choice than a camping experience. The gifts of spring
wildflowers, returning birds and emerging wildlife are a complement to the spring and
summer activities of canoeing, orienteering, swimming, camping and nature study. The spring trip to
Tawingo can help you round out the year with a life-long memory in the outdoors.
Camp Tawingo Outdoor Centre | Phone: 705-789-5612 | Fax: 705-789-6624
1844 Ravenscliffe Road, Huntsville, Ontario P1H 2N2
www.tawingo.net | outdoors@tawingo.net
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Camping Skills & Outdoor Recreation
Basic camping skills are not only fun and useful for developing life-long interests in the
outdoors. They also provide curriculum links in social studies, physical education and natural
sciences. They encourage self-reliance and generate resourcefulness.
Camp-Craft Skills: Firebuilding, outdoor cooking, tent, tarp shelters, knots, lashing; preparation
for outtrips
Cookout Meals: Hot dog & hamburger cookouts; breakfast, lunch, dinner outs; prepared for/
prepared by group
Canoeing:10 person and 2 person canoes; kayaks; water safety and lessons, boating games, races,
recreational boating
Swimming: Fully supervised waterfront, swimming lessons, recreational swimming, waterfront
games and relays
Orienteering: Map reading and compass skills, scatter and route courses, photo and trim
orienteering, orienteering meets
Day/Overnight Tours: Day hikes to beaver dams, bog walks & heron rookery, overnight canoe
trips to nearby island campsites
Free Time Recreation: Land-based sports, hiking, canoeing, swimming, indoor games and crafts
ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES IN WINTER
Winter Camp-Craft: Heat management, cold-weather injuries, firebuilding, outdoor cooking,
quinzhee-building, tent, tarp shelters
Day Tours: Winter travel and destination tours to mountain, bogs, beaver dams and heron
rookeries by skI, snowshoe, sled…
Recreational Tobogganing: Safe, supervised tubing hill with commercial quality tubes and
carpets; lit for night-time use
Broomball: Recreational and activity sessions in winter sports with broomball equipment, large
inflated pushballs, etc.
Snowshoeing: Introduction to traditional North American styles of travel followed by games,
hiking, sliding and climbing
Cross-Country Skiing: Instruction grid, groomed trails, full range of trail difficulties, lake and
on-trail skiing, candle-lit night-ski trail
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Arts and Heritage Skills
The outdoors is an endless source of inspiration to the creative mind. At Camp, we exercise
the mind and spirit as well as the body. The outdoors is more than a subject of study; it is the
medium within which the artistic muse, language skills and historical links can be stimulated.
Language Arts in the Outdoors: Creative writing, nature-inspired poetry, journals,
vocabulary, word and language activities
Natural Art Gallery of Ontario N-AGO: Following an introduction to the outdoors as medium,
individuals or pairs of artists construct their own art gallery ‘installations’.
Communications and Media Literacy: News broadcasts, newspapers, stories, pictures, or
comic strips are used to collect moments, memories, and stories of camp.
Arts and Crafts - Nametags: A popular wood craft activity involves sanding, shaping and
woodburning a souvenir nametag and necklace.
Arts and Crafts: The arts/crafts area can be utilized for a wide range of nature-based activities
or groups may bring their own ideas.
Pioneer Skills: An indoor/outdoor pioneer area offers cooking, rope-making, quill-writing,
cordage, puzzles, gadgets, and more.
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Nature and Science Activities
While never losing sight of the fact that the outdoor experience is an excellent medium for all learning
and, at its most fundamental, an important life learning itself, it cannot be denied that most natural
science activities are enriched immeasurably when the student is immersed in the subject. For this
reason, nature and science activities are often confused with outdoor education activities. While the
first is the second, the second is not necessarily the first.
Mountain Hike: Eagle Mountain is a geological feature on the Camp Tawingo property. A detailed
Mountain Hike Leader’s Guide, a clearly marked trail and station markers with inspirational
quotations on leadership and goal-setting make this a must-do for most groups.
Theme Hike: Numerous trails lead all over our property and may be used to focus attention on
everything from glaciation and geology to beaver ecology and stream studies.
Birding Activity: There are several bird-feeding stations across the property and, at various times
of the year, different types of ornithology may be studied. A written bird unit highlights
identification skills.
Eco Games: For younger groups, role-playing games on various themes offer an excellent, visceral
experience to complement the observed relationships discovered on hikes and other activities.
Environmental Projects: Groups of students have planted trees, refurbished stream banks,
stabilized slopes, reduced soil compaction and conducted water studies.
Stream and Water Studies: We offer a number of specific stream studies: physical properties of
a stream, erosion and meander studies, stream life, oil pollution exercise.
Alternative Energy Tour: We touch on a variety of alternative energy topics and exercises –
from wood and wind to solar and geothermal. Students can participate actively in some simple
AE designs and see some demonstration projects.
ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES IN WINTER
Animal Track Studies: Winter tracks can introduce campers to all manner of winter nature activity. Begin
with introduction to animal track signs, track ID and animals in winter. Follow with people prints,
deer-feeding, track hunts and more.
Toboggan Physics: Recreation and education are meshed together with calculations of toboggan velocity
and acceleration followed by races and turning challenges.
Lake and Snow Studies: Winter science teams explore the lake from top to bottom – creating a lake profile,
measuring ice thickness and temperature
Microclimate Studies: Winter science teams make snow profiles in various areas and examine snow crystals,
wind speed and temperature to determine how microclimates affect animals.
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Leadership Skills
Ideal education is one that develops intellectual power. It is not one that is directed to immediate
needs; it is not a specialized education, or a pre-professional education; It is not a utilitarian education.
It is an education calculated to develop the mind.
* Frederick Mayer 2007.
Leadership skills within the outdoor curriculum permit a visceral experience to accompany the
intellectual experience. When we combine physical, emotional and intellectual memories of an
experience, the learning is that much more profound.
Team Building Activities: These activities are designed to bring the group together and maintain
it. Through activities that challenge the group as well as the individuals within the group,
follow-up discussions can highlight not just what happens at a psychomotor level but also at an
affective and cognitive level within the group.
Initiative Games: These forest-located and equipment-based exercises use imaginative play and
group challenges to permit the team leader to focus on different elements of group structure and
maintenance. The activities are fun and the messages ‘sneak up’ on the participants in a memorable
way.
Low Ropes Course: Like initiative games, our low ropes elements permit a fun and physical
approach to team building, trust, communication and challenge by choice. Group members find
and use their voice, succeed or fail together, and deal with the consequences.
Cooperative Games: In a society within which competition can sometimes overtake reason,
cooperative games emphasize mutual support, collective goal setting, identifying the real
opponent and the emotions associated with success.
Leadership Activities: We can offer a number of activities that are project-based and designed
to permit a group to come together. We can explore many different aspects of leadership. The
activities may be outdoor, physical-based or classroom, intellectual-based.
Motivational Speakers: Several of our staff have travelled extensively across Canada and North
America to deliver powerful, focussed messages related to various leadership themes. Your group
can add a presentation at no extra charge by virtue of your being here at Camp.
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Large Group Activities
One of the things that a camp experience provides is a re-shaping of group. In school, the structure of
the society can become restricted and fixed. By ‘shaking things up’ in the Camp experience, the
definitions of ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘us’, ‘we’ are open for discussion. The large group experiences are also great
celebration points for the whole group. Some of the smaller group activities can be adapted to
permit a simultaneous large group activity.
Wide Games: The sports field offers a safe, open space for a variety of traditional camp games.
The forest areas around Camp also permit some great variations on these and other games:
Prisoner’s Base, Capture the Flag, Sticks and more.
Last Day Extravaganza: The activity groups involved in learning skills throughout the stay can
join together for a last day relay-type carnival or extravaganza. This is lots of fun and a great way
to wrap up a stay at Camp.
Cycles: Cycles is a nature game that focuses on the basic elements of life and their movement
through the food chain. Students are producers, consumers and decomposers swapping energy
chips that represent sun, soil, air and water.
First Nations Trade Routes: Trade Routes examines the flow of resources under the control of
various groups. The activity involves each group’s efforts to secure the resources they require to
survive and the trade structures that result.
Par Lauf Relays: Par Lauf originates from Scandinavia and is a running relay that can be adapted
to any number of camp activities at each relay checkpoint. The race is wild and confusing but fun
and satisfying.
Rocket Launch: Groups can prepare model rockets at home and conduct a rocket launch as part of
their last day celebration. Camp provides a full ‘official’ launch gantry, display table and rocketry panel.
Instincts for Survival: Developed by Waterloo educator, Frank Glew, Instincts for Survival has been a
staple activity at many schools and outdoor centres for decades. Herbivores, omnivores and carnivores compete for resources in a forest setting. In any season, ‘Survival’ is both entertaining and
educational.
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE - PROGRAM ACTIVITY DESCRIPTIONS
Evening Programs
The classic difference between the Camp and school experience is the opportunity to extend the
school day past the usual afternoon dismissal. In the evening, Camp combines the social and
educational elements of Camp into a series of unique events that do not depend on TV or electronics
but on the strength of the group. Following supper and some cabin-time, there may be both an early
and later evening activity before a snack and final announcements.
Outdoor Camp re: What better way to finish the day than to gather around an outdoor campfire. There
may be a full structured social recreation program or the group may prefer to sit and enjoy the elements of
night sky, close friends and warm campfires. Snack may be served at the fire or back inside.
Indoor 'Camp re': The indoor campfire is usually a structured combination of elements that make up a
successful campfire program: opening, singsong, games, stunts, skit, stories, and a closing.
Skit Night: Each cabin group is invited to meet and plan a skit appropriate for the whole group. Even the
teachers are invited to perform. The Tawingo staff will cover the blanks with opening, closing and betweenskits fillers.
Night at the Races: Activity groups work together in a combination of race and relay events providing the
athletes and spectators. Between races, everyone can place ‘bets’ with play money on the outcome of the races.
Heritage Evenings: The structure of the indoor campfire can be adapted to specific themes. Programs
involving pioneer days in Canada as well as first nation activities can give an historical perspective on the
activities that the group enjoys during the day.
Wolf-Deer Ecology: This AV presentation offers an overview of the separate life histories of the wolf and deer
as well as a look at the close relationship between the two. Bone and skull displays lead to a question and
answer period.
Clue (Tawingo CSI): A dastardly crime (usually a ‘stolen’ snack) has been committed. The teachers dressed as
mysterious characters are suspected of using strange ‘weapons’ and committing the crime in a bizarre
location. The students are the detectives.
TSX (Tawingo Stock Exchange): Business partners take their thousand dollars and purchase any number of
shares in various stocks. The value of those stocks go up or down each round. The teams can consult an ‘inside
trader’ or use their own business acumen. It makes for lots of fun looking for the next Bay Street executives.
Night Hike: Camp staff depart with small groups of campers for a different kind of sensory hike. They enjoy
a serie of activities that highlight the emotions and feelings that a night experience can give. Night hikes
are a memorable Camp experience for all.
Astronomy: Following an indoor presentation of the night sky, some key themes and features and an
introduction to constellations that demonstrates some key themes and features of the night sky and some
basic constellations, the group moves outside for a look at the magnificent Muskoka night sky.
ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES IN WINTER
Night Ski: The basic day-time ski trail is also candle-lit for a beautiful night-time experience. Groups may ski,
gather around an outdoor bonfire or participate in other outdoor evening activities.
CAMP TAWINGO OUTDOOR CENTRE
The Critical Path to a Camp Tawingo Outdoor Adventure
You contact Camp with key information about season, numbers, grade and length of stay.
We provide you contract, billing information, program planning guides and tentative outline
You gather support from administration, fellow staff, parents and students
We visit the school to assist you in promotion of the trip and development of a final schedule
You organize transportation and timing to bring your group to Camp Tawingo
We deliver on our promise of an outdoor adventure and life-long memories for your students
Camp Tawingo Outdoor Centre | Phone: 705-789-5612 | Fax: 705-789-6624
1844 Ravenscliffe Road, Huntsville, Ontario P1H 2N2
www.tawingo.net | outdoors@tawingo.net