LNT for kids?

[Ryan Jordan]

I’m preparing a Cub Scout Leave No Trace curriculum for ages 8-10 (boys), and wanted to solicit some age appropriate activities from y’all for ideas.

[Scott Peterson]

“Where fires are permitted, use established fire rings, fire pans, or mound fires.” – Set up a workshop to demonstrate how to build a low-impact fire, including how to collect downed wood, and also suggesting using stoves sometimes to avoid the need for fires.

“Use a map and compass to eliminate the use of marking paint, rock cairns or flagging.” – A very basic map course is probably something already part of Cub Scouts? As activities go though, a route finding course has to be fun for 8 to 10 year olds who are partnered off together.

Learning about and then viewing native wildlife in the field would also probably be a lot of fun for the kids. Having each one pick an animal native to areas they might go to, and then research on the internet, present a little to the group…and then follow up with a field trip.

[Colleen Clemens]

i’d suggest a low-intensity, kid-safe service project of some kind. kids like to feel useful, like to feel like they’re doing something important. if you know of a local creek or park that is frequently littered or vandalized, it might be a good place to show the consequences of NOT having a LNT mentality.

[Mike Barney]

When we’ve done programs with younger boys, we’ve tried to not get too detailed, more of pretty open ended, high level generalized questions and examples, letting them set the level, then elaborating and responding to their answers.

(For our troop, it has often been hard to get a focused group of Cubs for something like this as some have a lot of camping or hiking experience, and others zero, and many have never seen a campfire.) After a short overview, I’d probably lead with open ended questions such as the following, then discuss their answers:

What do you think Leave No Trace means?

How could you go somewhere and Leave No Traces that you had been there?

What would be examples of Leaving Traces? How could you fix this?

Why would it be important to Leave No Trace?

MikeB

[Eric Lavering]

Someone mentioned in another thread that they approach LNT by imagining that a murderous psycho was stalking them through the woods. I think young boys would really enjoy it if you incorporated this idea of “sneaking” into your teaching.

I’d use something slightly friendlier than a murderer, though…

[Ryan Jordan]

We did our first LNT unit at our Cub Scout meeting tonite.

I took a Topo! map and added a bunch of campsites, and asked the kids to rate whether each campsite was low impact or high impact or otherwise good/bad based on its proximity to streams, trails, meadows, swamps, forests, hillsides, etc.

They had a ton of fun with it. They are 8 year olds (Bear Scouts).

We also did this neat game where we arranged all the kids in a circle and gave each kid an index card (hole punched with a BackpackingLight.com UrsaLite Carabiner through the hole << shameless advertising to our nations youth) with a component of our local ecosystem on it: grizzly bear, field mouse, meadow grass, huckleberry, cutthroat trout, elk, moose, swamp, coyote, wolf, human, etc. The first boy (e.g., huckleberry) was asked to define his relationship to any other component (e.g., chose 'grizzly bear' because bears eat berries). So a string (AirCore Pro UrsaLite Cord << more shameless advertising) was clipped from the huckle berry boy to the grizzly bear boy. Then the grizzly bear boy defined the next relationship: cutthroat trout (because bears eat trout). And the cord was clipped to the trout boy. And so on, until a neat web of interconnected AirCore links was made in the circle of boys. The emphasis was this: each component of the ecosystem was integral to the health of the web. I then had the boys holding the bear, wolf, and whitebark pine nut cards drop their cards to the floor. Result: the web collapsed. Moral: every component is important to the ecosystem as a whole. Lesson learned w.r.t. LNT: respect the ecosystem components while your in the wilderness enjoying them by following appropriate game harvesting and low impact laws. It didn't all click for these 8-year olds til the very end. It was really cool. Aside: we also did a tent pitching contest, using the Big Sky Products’ 1P2V. One of our patrols completed the pitch from stuff sack to person-zipped-in-tent in about 2 minutes – without talking!

[Scott Peterson]

Ryan,

Your idea with the web is outstanding. While I never approach kids, even younger ones with the notion that everything has to be at a “high” level, I do think just talking about this stuff will not have the same impact as a fun activity. You seem to have found a great way to get them involved while driving home the point!

[Sarah Kirkconnell]

Take them hiking!
I got the den mom for my son’s troop to do that (I of course came along!). We have actually done two LNT hikes at this point, this year. The kids love it. Our den is mostly 8-9 years old.
We talked about LNT principles and ideas while hiking – and picked up garbage.

[Laurie Ann March]

every year we get involved with a trail clean-up – in May 2007 my company is co-sponsoring a North American wide backpacking trail and canoe routes clean-up

forming a group to participate in the event in your local area would be a good way to help out and instill a LNT way of doing things

let me know if it would be okay to post info for the clean-up here – I should be done the website for the event in the next few weeks

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