ACTIVITY PLANS
Outdoor Activity Plans for Scouts, Groups & Outdoor Skills
Plan engaging outdoor activities with practical activity plans designed for Scouts, youth groups, schools and outdoor learning. Explore activities covering survival skills, campcraft, navigation, fire lighting, knots, teamwork and other essential outdoor skills.
Each activity plan gives you a clear starting point for running a practical session, with activities organised by age, duration, group size and difficulty so you can quickly find ideas that suit your group.
Whether you’re planning a Scout meeting, camp, outdoor skills session or youth group activity, you’ll find practical ideas that help young people learn new skills, build confidence, work as a team and enjoy spending time outdoors.
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SGUK Outdoor Skills Challenge 40: Predict Where Water Will Pool After Rain
After a spell of heavy rain, some parts of the ground dry quickly while others remain muddy for days. You can often predict where the water will collect before the rain even starts, simply by looking at the shape of the land, the soil and the way the surrounding ground drains. This is a useful…
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SGUK Outdoor Skills Challenge 37: Find Five Types of Animal Homes
A woodland floor, hedgerow or patch of grass can look quiet until you start noticing the signs of life around you. A hole beneath a tree root, a nest tucked into a hedge or a web stretched between two branches can tell you that an animal has been using that spot for shelter, raising young…
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SGUK Outdoor Skills Challenge 35: Make and Follow Trail Markers
There’s a useful difference between walking a route someone else has marked and being able to mark a route for somebody to follow. The second takes a little more thought. You need to decide where a marker belongs, make its meaning clear and check that the next person can follow it without having to guess.…
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SGUK Outdoor Skills Challenge 31: Run a “What If” Scenario for a Hike
A successful hike depends on more than choosing a route and putting one foot in front of the other. Conditions can change, paths can become difficult to follow, equipment can fail and people can become tired or injured. The decisions you make when something unexpected happens can have a considerable effect on how safely you…
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SGUK Outdoor Skills Challenge 30: Make a Rain Gauge
Rainfall affects everything from ground conditions on a walk to how quickly streams and rivers can rise. Making a simple rain gauge gives you a way to measure what’s falling where you live, rather than relying on how wet the ground looks. For this challenge, you’ll make a rain gauge of your own, place it…
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17 Camp Furniture Ideas: Easy Bushcraft Camp Gadgets
There is something satisfying about arriving at camp with little more than some rope, a few useful tools and whatever suitable materials you can find around you, then turning the campsite into something that actually works for you. A simple tripod can become a kitchen. A few poles can turn into a gear rack. With…
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How Children Can Navigate a Short Route
Navigation doesn’t have to mean walking for miles with a map and compass. For children, learning to navigate can start with something much simpler: understanding where they are, knowing where they want to go and working out how to get there. A short route is a great way to practise. It might be a walk…
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How to Set Up a Tent: A Beginner’s Guide for Children
Setting up a tent is one of the most useful camping skills you can learn. The first few times it can seem confusing, especially when you’re faced with poles, pegs and a bundle of fabric, but it becomes much easier once you understand the basic process. You don’t need to do everything perfectly straight away.…
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100 Skills Every Young Outdoor Explorer Should Know (Digital Checklist)
There is something special about learning how to do things for yourself outdoors. Knowing how to read a map, put up a shelter, light a fire, recognise a tree, tie a useful knot or simply work out which way to go gives children more than another skill to add to a list. It helps them…
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How to Build a Snow Shelter
Snow can look like one of the least useful materials for building a shelter, but when it is deep enough and properly packed, it can provide surprisingly good insulation. A well-built snow shelter can block wind and trap warmth far more effectively than you might expect for something so cold. There are several types of…
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How to Build a Debris Shelter
A debris shelter is a simple woodland shelter made mainly from natural materials such as branches, leaves, moss and other fallen vegetation. It is one of the more interesting shelter-building skills to practise because the materials are all around you, but making a shelter that actually keeps you warm and reasonably dry takes more than…
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How to Start a Nature Journal
You don’t need to know the names of hundreds of plants and animals to keep a nature journal. In fact, one of the best things about starting one is that it gives you a reason to slow down and pay attention to what is happening around you. A nature journal can be as simple as…
Outdoor activities for Scouts and youth groups
Outdoor activity plans are a simple way to turn practical skills into engaging group sessions. Whether you’re working with Squirrels, Beavers, Cubs, Scouts or Explorers, activities can be adapted to suit different ages, abilities and experience levels.
Our activity ideas cover a range of outdoor skills, including survival, campcraft, navigation, fire lighting, knots, shelter building, teamwork and problem solving. They can be used for Scout meetings, camps, school sessions, youth groups and outdoor skills days.
Find the right activity for your group
Whether you have ten minutes for a quick skills challenge or you’re planning a longer outdoor session, explore the activities above to find your next idea.