Photo: Teri Jordan – North Cavan students embrace Camp Kawartha’s hands-on outdoor activities
Two weeks ago, twenty four grade six students from North Cavan Public School took their class trip to Camp Kawartha, an event that for students of this school has become a sort of rite of passage.
For two and a half days, these students together with half a dozen parents and their teacher bonded over communal meals, campfires, survival games and hikes through the wetlands learning about nature and themselves.
Camp Kawartha is an accredited, award-winning, not-for-profit organization offering a wide variety of programs primarily focussed on outdoor environmental awareness, outdoor and environmental education and stewardship located in Douro-Dummer. The camp is open year-round, and the most significant user group is schools who come for day or overnight experiences. The camp offers more than 50 programs for elementary and high school students that are linked to their curriculum and incorporate sciences, history, recreation and the arts and with outdoor activities that are seasonally adjusted. The camp is staffed by professional educators who deliver programs with active, hands-on activities that integrate a wide variety of programs and operates out of their base building, the Outdoor Education Centre. They also run day and overnight summer camp programs.
On the first day, students blew off some steam, participating in some environmental and sports activities including walking along high ropes and the Squirrel Fly, where participants raise each other on a harness to swing suspended in the air. Things were more subdued in the evening as they settled into a campfire program, complete with stories, songs and games around an outdoor fire near the lake. With excitement high, sleep was slow to arrive in the cabins but was easier to come by the following evening. The second day included an exploration of the wetlands where students collected pond species with nets and buckets for a lesson in water creatures. Amongst the temporary captives was a turtle! The second evening program was a nature walk in the dark, a short section of which was done alone.
The experience was capped off with a large Survival game which was played with students from another school in attendance at the camp. Students are given an animal identity and have to find stations offering food, water and mating opportunities, while parent participants slow their progress by providing them with gifts of additional stress or disease.
For Carter Szusz, who is a recent arrival to the school of 142 students, the event provided a welcome opportunity to get to know his classmates outside the classroom, having fun and doing kids’ stuff that doesn’t normally happen in an academic environment. He was excited to learn some Ojibway terminology and the Quest for Fire where students learned to build a fire using flint, bark and steel clearly caught his imagination.
Teri Jordan was eager to return as a parental chaperone for the second year with North Cavan, and has other Camp Kawartha experience as well. There was no hesitation in signing up for the Squirrel fly, she was just sorry there was not enough time for parents to participate in the high ropes Crows’ Nest experience. The Survival game is another highlight for Jordan, but the food is not far behind.
For North Cavan students, the getting to know their classmates better at this moment became a bit more poignant the following Monday as they made their way to James Strath for a day of Orientation. Their days at North Cavan are now behind them, but they will begin Grade seven knowing their North Cavan classmates all the better when they start school in the fall. KG
