Article: Mapping Camp Last Summer!

Darya working on her legend

Teresa showing us the map that she has been working on.

On August 24-27, 2012 we took a mapping course from Sarah, at the Alberta Children's Hospital. The people that came to this amazing event were Bridie, Emma, Alix, Molly, Darya, Helene, Sunniva, Michael and Teresa. We learned how to construct an orienteering map from start to finish. We also played a lot of wonderful games. We started with a city base map and worked on it from there. Then we ended with putting it all into OCAD and made it an official standard sprint map. After a long week of creating maps we decided with would be a great idea if we go for a swim at the Foothills Aquatic  Center. We wanted to take this camp because we wanted to become more skilled at the art of creating orienteering maps. Learning about mapping will improve your orienteering skills GREATLY! It was a week that we all could create stronger relationships with our friends.

Guest Speaker: Ellie on Glaciers

Last week we had another special guest - Ellie - come in and teach us about glaciers. We played a confusing string game at the start which only one group could figure out! Ellie brought in a lot of mini marshmallows that we used in a hands-on demonstration. We went outside and used the snow on the ground to see for ourselves how compression worked. After that we made s'mores using our demonstration marshmallows! We all learned a lot - thanks Ellie!

This group got the string game!

Trying to figure out the string game!

Guest Speaker: Andrew on Survival Techniques

Last week Andrew joined our training night and taught us all about smart adventuring in the wilderness. We learned about the ten essentials, how to build a lean-to and how to find directions without using a compass.

We started the night off with a fun game called "Compass Twister".

Andrew taught us about the ten essentials and we had to find an example of each one hidden in the backyard.

Thank you Andrew!

Learning to Contour

Tonight the younger kids played some contour games with Damian by using cut up rubber balls to draw around. They used these to see how hills would look in real life and on a map. Meanwhile the older kids drew out their own courses on maps of the city parks. It was a fun and informative night for both groups!

The ball we used as a hill

Create your own terrain and map

This week we we created our own model terrains using blocks and lego

We then drew a map of our terrain with the 5 elements of a map:

-a title

-a legend

-a north arrow

-the author (us!)

-the scale & contour interval

We also had fun putting together map puzzles

January 30th: Being Crafty

This Wednesday we showed our creative sides. Using fun paints and assorted materials, we decorated fabric for flags. Then we added wire to construct a fully functioning control!

Ingrid decorates her control flag

Complete!  We will use them in the spring for training exercises.

January 23rd: Learning to Map!

Tonight the younger juniors played a game with Damian called "Roll-a-Map". Someone would roll a dice and each number corresponded with a feature on the map. The number that got rolled depicted which feature they had to draw on their map!

 

The older juniors had all taken a mapping course this past August, so they were working on putting the finishing touches on the map they created last summer.