Ideas needed for Youth Outdoor Activity Day

[MNElkNut]

Looking for some ideas here folks. I am the president of our local PF chapter and we are going to hold a Youth Outdoor Activity Day late this summer. This will be a free thing for kids to come out and experience a lot of different outdoor hobbies like: trap shooting, BB/Pellet gun, archery, orienteering/geocaching, shoot/don't shoot course, mock blood trail, trapping demos, slingshots, casting clinic, etc. We are going to ask conservation orgs to come out and host a youth activity of their choosing. We cannot shoot rifles of any kind at this facility, but we have plenty of room.

My question is can you think of an outdoor activity that we could put on for kids to do? All ages of kids will be participating and we need things for young kids as well as old kids. Prolly looking at 200 kids is my guess. If you have any ideas of things we could do, I would really appreciate hearing them. After all....it's for the kids!

 

[Muskeez]

Fly tying?

Water available for Kayaking?

In BoyScouts we loved the race to build a fire and boil water or burn a string in half at a set height.

 

[SFC B]

A fire building station with a few options (flint/steel, bow, mag glass) or perhaps a primitve shelter building workshop for lean-to or wiki-up shelters.

 

[Gellar]

This sounds like an awesome event! What part of MN are you in? I am from Iowa and work for a County Conservation Board and do activities like this daily! You have lots of great ideas! keep the sessions short, not more than an hour.
Activities that I do at field days include scavenger hunts, pond netting (using nets to catch frogs, tadpoles, and aquatic insects) canoeing/kayaking, tree ID, prairie plant ID, fur ID (your local C.O. probably has access to a fur case containing furbearers in your area), outdoor crafts such as leaf rubbing, track molds(use plaster of paris and fill tracks and wait till it hardens) and I have used all the activities that you listed very successfully! If you need more ideas or anything I will be willing to email you my program plans and lesson plans for activities that I use.

Fire building and shelter construction are big hits as well!

 

[MKotur325]

Definitely like Blood trails. If you are going to do that, make a couple of different difficulties. When I went through Bow-Ed the mock blood trails that they made were about 30 yds long and Mindlessly simple. There was nothing realistic about the blood trail. If you do blood trailing, make one somewhat realistic for the older kids.

Since its PF, might also see if you can get some volunteer dogs. I'd bet you can work with your local DU chapter to find some labs if nothing else. Kids love to throw things for dogs to retrieve...

 

[BigHornRam]

We're doing the same thing here in Montana. 2nd annual youth outdoor expo, May 10th at the Teller Wildlife Refuge in Corvallis, MT. Last year we had about 300 youths attend. This year could easily double that. We gave away 21 summer camp trips last year. This year we plan to give out 40 trips. One thing I did was to pre build blue bird nesting boxes and let the kids put them together with a cordless drill. Then they got to take them home. Lot's of fun!

Last years event was filmed by Skull Bound TV and has been on there show I understand.

 

[MNElkNut]

No water unfortunately. Thanks for the ideas, I have added to my list. I like the fire and shelter building ones.

I am open to any an all ideas. We are in west central Minnesota (Alexandria).

 

[1_pointer]

At the outdoor days here, a few activities stand out that generally had long lines. A rock climbing wall. You'd probably have to find a commercial operation to do this. This one had a portable wall on a trailer. Next was a DNR booth that showed folks how to prepare fish for the table. In the back were a couple of folks frying up the freshly cleaned fish. Since your doing archery, it might not be too hard to include a station for crossbows as well. I don't know what kind of terrain you have, but another kid favorite was a local jeep club was there and giving kids a ride in their jeeps over a bit of a terrain park.

 

[L. I. Yankee]

How bout tent pitching,treestand safety,Turkey/game calling, outdoor cooking,........

 

[JohnCushman]

In boyscout camp we used to tie small weights on the end of fishing line and cast it, trying to hit Frisbees set out in the yard. Also, how about a camp cooking station...grilling, dutch ovens, cooking hotdogs in a stick...

 

[L. I. Yankee]

Don't forget pizza taquitos......

 

[JohnCushman]

I called my older sons to see what they would like to see at an event like this and they both said strippers and beer...the apple doesn't fall far from the tree

 

[Gellar]

As I was out and about I thought of a few more, but may not be feasible with your amount of people. Pheasant cleaning or fish cleaning. get pheasants from a local pheasant farm or catfish from a fish market and demonstrate how to clean them.

 

[MNElkNut]

strippers and beer for the kids?? I think it would be a hit with a few dads and I would be tarred and feathered by every mom within 100 miles. I think I may have to pass on that idea.

We are thinking about free lunch and if we can raise the funds, maybe a tshirt for every kid. The hard part is that I want to focus on kids who dont have the opportunity to try these types of things. how am I going to reach them? I have a good relationship with the local paper and he will print a few announcements for me and I plan to advertise on the radio. But how do I reach that kid who would love to try shooting a BB gun or archery but his family doesnt hunt or shoot?

This is quite the undertaking and I am pretty excited about it. We did a Parent/Daughter shoot last year and have 25 girls out for it. Half had never shot a gun in their lives. Man, the smiles that night produced! One girl had never shot a gun and decided right then and there to join the high school trap team. That is why we do these things right there!

 

[JMG]

Paintball.

 

[Sawtooth]

Good place to reach those kids that may not have the opportunities you are offering could be found at your local Boys and Girls Clubs, Health and Welfare Department, or your public school districts Physical Education Teachers.

 

[Redwood]

Don't forget s'mores and the ball you kick around to make camp ice cream.

 

[ardrhi]

I am a PF chapter president in SE Idaho. We had a huge success with our first Family Outdoor Festival last year. Our Festival was the first Saturday of November and it included our free mentored youth pheasant hunt. The driving force behind doing an entire festival was that our youth pheasant hunt was simply getting too many hunters to send all at the same time. We had over 100 hunters RSVP for last year's hunt. We can stagger them through the day, but it wouldn't be very fun for them to stand in a line doing nothing if they arrive early or a field is running late. We decided it would be best to tell them to come at least a half hour early and then have things for them to do while they waited for a field to clear out. It also allowed us to offer activities for the entire family and not just the kids that were the right age for the youth hunt.
Anyway, my absolute top suggestions for two activities that run well, don't cost a whole lot, and engage people of all ages are tomahawk and knife throwing. These were just last minute additions last year, but they ended up being the most popular of all our activities. We thought it would mostly just be a thing for kids, but dads and even moms seemed just as excited as the little ones.
We invited and got great support from other sportsmen groups. A local mountain man group brought muzzleloaders and everyone enjoyed shooting them - I know you said no rifles, but maybe muzzleloaders would work. If you can find someone with muzzleloader shotguns, that would offer a unique experience that people found very interesting. We had our local Ducks Unlimited guys bring a huge duck and goose decoy spread. The National Wild Turkey Federation taught about turkey decoying, calling, and local hunting opportunities. Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation showed kids how to call elk and gave everyone that stopped by a free call to take home and practice.
Here are some others that we hope to add if the groups can make it: Fire department with fire trucks; Ambulance with first aid training; Army Recruiters with a climbing wall, Boy Scouts with a 100' monkey bridge.

 

[ardrhi]

How to reach kids? Schools. Make a 1/2 page flier with pictures of people doing the activities you're going to have. Simply take a stack to the front desk and tell them that your organization wants to help get kids outside. Its probably a good idea to keep guns off of the flier that you hand out in schools. If your event is late summer, you'll need to consider that the fliers need to go out before school lets out for break.
Facebook also works pretty well to reach teens and parents.

 

[MNElkNut]

This has been fantastic folks. I just keep updating my list with all of these activities (well, minus the beer/stripper one anyway!).

There are so many things that I want to do, I can see it is going to take some serious manpower to run this thing.

I need to figure out how to get a Fresh Tracks DVD running on a continuous loop out there in the lunch building or something (assuming that is okay with Randy).

Great stuff and more ideas are certainly welcome.