Program Descriptions

Camp Muskoka Outdoor Education Program details - Please click on each program below for more information about the activity, curriculum connections, camp goals, and both OCA Standards and OPHEA guidelines.

Predator and Prey

Come explore predator-prey relationships in the forest and investigate the importance of this balance in a community. Discover how animals catch their meals, and how they keep from becoming a meal for something else by taking on animal roles and playing out a life cycle in an ecosystem! Students will gain a new appreciation for animals, habitats, the environment, and factors that affect our ecosystem during a fast-paced game that promotes positive interactions and physical activity.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems - Biodiversity

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students may hunt together, flee together, or just enjoy the spirit of fair play and fun together, but either way, they all have played an important role in this eco system.
Leadership Opportunities: You can try to save your group of prey, you can lead them to food and water, or lead them into danger, but there are plenty of chances to take the lead.
Experiential Learning: Students gain a unique perspective of the connected nature of an eco-system and experience the natural world of the beautiful Muskoka forest.
Healthy Active Living: An animal's life can be exhausting, and so is this fast-paced, active, non-stop experience. Be ready to run, if you can't hide!
Community Building: When the game ends, everyone has a story, everyone played a role, and all are ready to re-live the experience, usually with a laugh and new connection to their community.

Cooperative Initiatives

This is your chance to float down the chocolate river, from marshmallow to marshmallow, while lava sharks stand between you and the shore! Hot chocolate river, shrinking island, blind conductor, toxic waste along with many other co-operative games give students the opportunity to strategize, achieve a common goal while laughing and encouraging others.

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals:

Team Building: Every initiative is about finding a strategy as a team, and placing team success in front of personal success. You can save yourself from the chocolate sharks, but what about the team?
Leadership Opportunities: Each initiative has opportunities for students to take a leadership role. These unique activities often give those who are less willing to speak up in a classroom a chance to be heard.
Experiential Learning: If you have an idea, try it out. If it doesn't work, try a new one. These activities allow for trial and error solution finding, as well as discovering through those solutions.
Healthy Active Living: Whether jumping from marshmallow to marshmallow, searching for the goal, or racing back to your starting point, all of these activities are sure to raise your spirits and you heart rate.
Community Building: Sometimes the simplest things can bring a group together. Finding new ways to communicate and appreciate your community can happen in the big activities as well as the smaller ones.

Campfire

“There was a great big moose, who like to drink a lot of juice…” Sing songs, dance, and listen to stories all by the glow of a campfire!

Curriculum Connections:

The Arts: Music – Creating and Presenting

The Arts: Dance – Creating and Presenting

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: We sing together, we dance together, and we look as silly as you can imagine together too.
Leadership Opportunities: Share a song, share a story, maybe this is the way you feel comfortable taking a lead.
Experiential Learning: Fire etiquette and safety, the sounds and smells of night, the stars, the warmth. There's a lot to experience at a campfire.
Healthy Active Living: 5 verses of your favorite action song is enough to compete with any aerobic activity.
Community Building: The songs, stories, and sharing of a beautiful Muskoka night make campfires an irreplaceable experience for many of our students.

Survival Shelter Building

Have you ever wondered how to keep warm, dry, and safe when outdoors? Students will learn how to survive on their own and will gain knowledge to increase their chances of rescue if they become lost. They will be given the opportunity to create their own survival habitat and test its ability to protect them in the elements in any season.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Structures and Mechanisms – Form and Function

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: This activity is literally a "team building". Students plan, strategize and communicate, gather and construct together in order to create their forest shelter.
Leadership Opportunities: Many students find the hands-on nature of this activity the perfect chance to take on a new role and find leadership qualities they rarely express.
Experiential Learning: Students explore the natural environment to learn about our beautiful biome, and some practical structural building concepts as they create their shelters.
Healthy Active Living: Searching the forest, carrying supplies, and constructing involves a great deal of physical activity.
Community Building: Students feel such pride and appreciation for each other and their accomplishments when they see the physical survival structures they’ve worked together to build. Creating as a community is a powerful experience.

Survival Fire Building

Birch bark, tinder, kindling, and fuel wood... do you have enough resource to ignite your passion for fire building? Students will have the opportunity to create their own survival fires using resources they can find in the forest. Rain, snow, or shine, your students' sense of pride and self-esteem will grow with their fire. Students will also learn how fire can aid in their long-term survival and their chances of rescue in an emergency.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Heat in the Environment

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Conservation of Energy and Resources

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students co-ordinate and rely on each other to acquire resources, create a fire structure, and keep the fire alive in any condition.
Leadership Opportunities: Students get the chance to have their ideas heard, and take a leadership role in the project in a unique and novel environment.
Experiential Learning: Students are exposed to a natural environment full of new experiences to adapt to, appreciate, and conquer in their own way.
Healthy Active Living: Students are busy and active in our beautiful forest while they search for resources and gather the supplies.
Community Building: Students will appreciate the contributions and support of their fellow classmates when they accomplish goals. The sense of accomplishment and esteem will bring communities together.

Survivor Muskoka

This is your chance to show your new survival skills and your ability to work towards common goals with your tribe. Forging food, water, and survival resources, creating a tribal and team identity, and competing while cooperating is what is needed win this final challenge. Students compete against other tribes to build a fire and shelters while receiving points.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Biodiversity

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Survivor Muskoka solidifies the team spirit the students have been building for the duration of their trip. The group must survive and work together to accomplish each task.
Leadership Opportunities: Each task in Survivor Muskoka provides ample opportunity to step up, be heard and encourage others to contribute to the group's success.
Experiential Learning: Each task of Survivor Muskoka is an opportunity to put into practice the hard and soft skills acquired over your trip. Learn by making it happen!
Healthy Active Living: It's a fast paced, high energy game, and you need to keep moving to accomplish all the tasks before the time is up.
Community Building: Survivor Muskoka is the ultimate expression in team achievement, as the group can only survive with everyone together. Students learn to value each other and see each other as important parts of their community.

Coureur Des Bois

Welcome to my village, what did you bring to trade? Experience the excitement and challenges of one of the most important periods in Canadian history. Students will travel the woods with their own set of trade goods in search of villages and chiefs to trade with, for fur. Students learn first-hand the difficulties and thrill of life as a Coureur du Bois.

Curriculum Connections:

Social Studies: Heritage and identity interactions of Indigenous peoples and Europeans prior to 1713, in what would eventually become Canada

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation.

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students work in small groups to navigate, strategize, and negotiate with their teachers. No Coureur Des Bois can do it alone.
Leadership Opportunities: Students get a chance to express ideas and lead in negotiations and navigations. Some lead by action, and some lead through words. All styles are welcome.
Experiential Learning: Students get unique insight into what it was like to live and explore as a Coureur Des Bois, and experience the challenges they faced.
Healthy Active Living: Students are busy and on the move through our beautiful forested gaming areas while they explore and negotiate.
Community Building: Beyond just covering a period of history, students feel connected and rewarded through succeeding together, which creates a strong foundation of appreciation and respect for one another.

Orienteering

Do you want a direction in life? Students work together with a compass to navigate through each point in our forest orienteering course, collecting information and solving a puzzle. Students will learn how to use a compass, will learn orienteering terminology and land marking, all while using bearings and mappings.

Curriculum Connections:

Social Studies: People and Environments – Political and Physical Regions of Canada

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students must communicate, listen, and work as a team to navigate through the orienteering course.
Leadership Opportunities: Every student takes their turn leading the group, as well as being led.
Experiential Learning: A great activity that allows students to discover the natural world they are working in, while navigating and finding the best way to get around.
Healthy Active Living: The course is fast paced with some challenging terrain. You'll have to keep moving to finish the course.
Community Building: Orienteering builds a sense of accomplishment and efficacy in students who had no ability to navigate before starting the activity. Working together and succeeding with new skills helps to create bonds and find new connections in a community.

Inuit Blanket

"Group are you READY?! On the “P” of pull, pull and hold!" The Inuit Blanket is a traditional celebration used in Inuit culture to create trust and to celebrate the spirit of community. As students surround the re-creation of the traditional animal hide blanket, each student will be given the opportunity to be lifted into the air by the group, and supported by the group, while learning to trust and communicate with their community.

Curriculum Connections:

Social Studies: Heritage and Identity – Communities in Canada, Past and Present

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Perhaps the most team focused activity offered, your success is completely dictated by your ability to work and focus as a team. Every person is needed and all have their moment to star.
Leadership Opportunities: Leadership can be many things; this activity allows students to lead through action, through taking a risk, or by coaching others through their moment.
Experiential Learning: The feeling of being supported, or literally pulling together, is one that often sends a message that words fail to deliver.
Healthy Active Living: Pulling is hard work, but worth the challenge. Inuit blanket is a great activity that creates a great connection between physical effort and achievement.
Community Building: This activity was instrumental in the expression of community in traditional Inuit culture, and we try to employ it in a similar way. This powerful experience of being cared for, and caring for other through their experience is not soon forgotten.

Eco Hike

What animal left these tracks? Why are those marks on that tree? What are these giant rocks doing here? Students are introduced to the wonders of nature. We will use our senses to explore the forest, and the plants and animals that call Muskoka their home. How are things alike? How are they different? Are there patterns that we can identify? The forest of Muskoka provides opportunity to interact with the bio-diverse ecosystem that is often unseen.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Life Systems - Biodiversity

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Water Systems

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Rocks and Minerals

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Help a friend on the trail, we leave as a team, and we return as a team.
Leadership Opportunities: Lead the group, share an animal fact or help to find the next trail marker. There are many chances to lead on a hike.
Experiential Learning: Exploring a new environment is always exciting. All of the wonder of the Muskoka forest awaits your discovery, and we'll be there to guide your way.
Healthy Active Living: Up hill and down, students navigate several kilometers of beautiful trails.
Community Building: A shared adventure into a unique environment always brings a group together and creates great memories with your community.

Canoeing and Kayaking

Steer your own path and use the power of multiple strokes to explore Cougar Lake. Students will be introduced to basic boat and water safety practices and equipment, and will learn the basic strokes and techniques necessary to control their water craft.

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students will need to work together to get anywhere. This activity provides instant feedback about whether your team is truly working together.
Leadership Opportunities: Are you a front of the boat person, or do you steer from the back? Skilled paddler or not, you can have a great opportunity to spark your team towards success.
Experiential Learning: Sitting in a canoe in a beautiful Muskoka lake isn't an experience the everyone gets. This powerful connection with the environment isn't quickly forgotten.
Healthy Active Living: You’re the motor of this boat. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to dig in and paddle.
Community Building: Some experiences are in themselves so powerful and beautiful, that they change the way you feel about those you experience them with. Spending a morning paddling, playing, and discovering together, can bring your community together.

Archery

Can you hit the bullseye? Students will learn the basics of archery, from how to correctly string a bow to releasing an arrow properly.

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: An individual activity, but there's something special about learning a new skill together. Cheer for each other, compete, and share a laugh as we all find our inner archer.
Leadership Opportunities: There's ample opportunity to coach, share tips and encourage. Leaders don't need to hit the bullseye, just encourage others to do their best.
Experiential Learning: It's easy to gain appreciation for a skill that was critical to survival at one point in our history, which happens when your firing your first arrows.
Healthy Active Living: A workout for the arms, shoulders, legs, and core. Archery is a real test of focus, strength, and control.
Community Building: Progressing from nothing to something in a unique skill like archery does wonders to bring a group together. You never know who will find the archer's touch, but all students certainly surprise themselves with what they can do by the end of the session.

Low Ropes

Challenge your ability to communicate, problem-solve, and overcome barriers associated with both individual and group-oriented tasks. Each of our low ropes elements are designed to inspire creativity and involvement by achieving a common group goal. Balance and determination may also come into play as you experience the power of group involvement and success.

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Whether it's an activity built for 2, 6, or 20, you cannot find a solution alone. Students support each other physically and metaphorically in all low rope elements.
Leadership Opportunities: Each student has a chance to make their voice heard through overcoming the unique elements. Unique problems will require unique ideas.
Experiential Learning: Learn by finding your own balance, knowing who will catch you, and how working as a unit will benefit everyone.
Healthy Active Living: Each element will test a different strength or skill. You're always moving and always getting better at the challenge.
Community Building: Whether it's through success or through the times we fall, each element has a way of teaching unique lessons about communication and the value of those around you, and the value of the laughs shared along the way.

Aerial Park

Fly through the air, and move through the tree tops! Challenge yourself to do what you never imagined you could. Get a bird's-eye view of Muskoka as you move through the multiple unique elements of our aerial challenge course. Our experienced guides will help you move through the obstacles, to reach our amazing zipline, where you will go for the ride of your life!

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: It's an amazing thing to trust and work with a classmate, especially in the beautiful forest canopy while traversing our challenges.
Leadership Opportunities: Whether you're shouting encouragement from afar, demonstrating your skill, or helping keep a friend upright, there are many powerful ways to lead throughout the course.
Experiential Learning: Sometimes seeing and doing is the most powerful way to learn about what you are capable of, and what you can do with the help of those around you.
Healthy Active Living: The course is truly a physical challenge for your upper and lower body, as well as your mind.
Community Building: The Aerial Course brings students together in an incredibly powerful way. Students are truly in it together, and find strength and connection they may not have realized they had before the experience. It's one of the most powerful bonding experiences you could imagine, with huge boosts to esteem and community.

Canadian Resource Scramble

What does it take to build our country, and what impact do these things have on the natural world around us? Students work together to find resources and assemble their own unique version of Canada. They'll need to strategize to find the best resources, negotiate with other groups, and assemble their own vision to succeed.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Structures and Mechanisms – Form and Function

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Geography: Natural resources around the world – Use and Sustainability

Geography: Global Settlement – Patterns and Sustainability

Geography: Global Inequalities – Economic Development and Quality of Life

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students need to work in a team through all aspects of the game. Searching, negotiating, constructing, and presenting all require a team effort to succeed.
Leadership Opportunities: Many types of leaders and skills are needed to complete the challenge. There is a massive range of skills that can prove useful and there are so many opportunities to make a meaningful impact.
Experiential Learning: This activity gives students a glimpse into many aspects of environmental impact paired with development. It's often easier to experience it than to hear about it.
Healthy Active Living: To complete your structure, you'll be busy and active. The parts won't come to you.
Community Building: Playing and working together are fundamental parts of any community. This activity will allow many different skills to shine, and allow students to connect in new ways that last long after the game is complete.

Green Exploration

There is a lot to learn about the beautiful, natural environment around us, and there's lots to discover as we do it. Students navigate with a GPS on a geocaching adventure through the Camp Muskoka property. With each Cache they find, they unlock a little more information about conservation, green technology, and how Canada can lead the way to preserve our climate and minimize impact.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Structures and Mechanisms – Systems in Action

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Water Systems

Geography: Natural Resources Around the World – Use and Sustainability

Geography: Global Settlement – Patterns and Sustainability

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students must work together to find the hidden caches. Work together, and you just might find them all.
Leadership Opportunities: Students can lead through navigation, lead searches, or present the information concealed in a cache. There are chances to take a lead.
Experiential Learning: It's hard to imagine a better environment to learn about green initiatives and conservation than our beautiful forests. Students will be experiencing the very things we are trying to preserve as they learn.
Healthy Active Living: The trail is challenging over roughly 4 kilometers, and there's lots of exploring to be done.
Community Building: The thrill of finding a cache, or just learning about the environment we all strive to protect helps students share in a sense of stewardship and knowledge.

Water Filter Challenge

How exactly does our water get clean, and what is "clean"? Students work in groups to design, build and create their own unique water filtration system using a wide variety of materials. What works best? What is most cost effective? Let's run the test and find out!

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Matter and Energy – Fluids

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Water Systems

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students must plan, budget, and build as a team. They'll need everyone's help to succeed.
Leadership Opportunities: This activity allows many different types of leadership - from vocal leaders, to organizers and builders, there are many ways to step up and lead.
Experiential Learning: A true "let's see" type of activity, students really get to put ideas into action and discover what works.
Healthy Active Living: Students will be busy and moving to construct before the deadline in this fast-paced activity.
Community Building: Working together to solve a problem always seems to allow connection in groups. As the water clears, relationships develop.

Geology Rocks

The unseen history of our country and the world is right beneath our feet. Students learn about the rock cycle and mineral properties, then set out on their way to hunt for their own hidden gems.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Earth and Space systems – Rocks and Minerals

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation

Camp Goals

Team Building: Learning together and searching as a group for the hidden world of rocks and minerals all around us.
Leadership Opportunities: You can share your discoveries and encourage others as you team up to find those hidden gems.
Experiential Learning: You really get a chance to understand the evolving and changing nature of the world around you as you search out evidence of those processes.
Healthy Active Living: The rocks won't come to you. Students set off on a long trail of discovery and exploration.
Community Building: Learning and exploring together brings people together, with rocks or otherwise.

Aquatic Studies

There is a unique and amazing eco-system living in every one of our water ways, complete with its own producers, consumers, and life of all kinds. Students get hands on, and actively explore what life is found in our variety of water systems.

Curriculum Connections:

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Biodiversity

Science: Understanding Life Systems – Interactions in the Environment

Science: Understanding Earth and Space Systems – Water Systems

Camp Goals

Team Building: Students work in small teams to try to explore an eco system and world that often goes unnoticed. By working together, students can find all kinds of unique life.
Leadership Opportunities: Whether you’re a 'put on your boots and jump in' kind of leader, or a 'slow things down and organize' person, there are plenty of ways to be heard through this activity.
Experiential Learning: There's a real "wow!" moment to realizing the world of living organisms often overlooked in our water systems. It's easier to show students than to tell them.
Healthy Active Living: The water won't come to you. There's plenty of hiking, carrying and sloshing around to keep students active throughout the experience.
Community Building: Remembering who caught the frog, who found the water scorpion, and who fell in the mud. There are many discoveries and lots of laughs to be shared while students learn and reflect.

Swimming

Come on in, the water's fine! Students get a chance to swim in our pristine natural lake, under the supervision of our NLS certified lifeguards. Few activities feel as much like camp as going for a swim in the lake on a hot day!

Curriculum Connections:

Health & Phys Ed: Active Living & Active Participation.

Camp Goals

Team Building: Water games, synchronized jumps, and plenty of other fun allow for great interactions and group play at the waterfront.
Leadership Opportunities: Some students are experienced swimmers and others are just learning. In either case, your encouragement and bravery to take a risk and jump in can help others find their strength.
Experiential Learning: Our beautiful natural lake provides students an opportunity to connect with one of the most amazing aspects of the Muskoka wilderness.
Healthy Active Living: Swimming isn't just fun, it's a great workout! Whether you take it slow or like to swim hard, you're enjoying an amazing full body activity.
Community Building: A swim in a lake has been bringing people together for as long as there have been people. Groups bond, play, and experience each other in new ways while they enjoy the environment around them.

Karaoke Dance Party

Some express themselves through words, and some express themselves through song! Take a risk while supported by the community around you and show off your vocal talents, alone or with your crew. Our camp staff keep the party going with the songs you love.

Curriculum Connections:

The Arts: Music – Creating and Presenting

The Arts: Dance – Creating and Presenting

Camp Goals

Team Building: Dancing together, singing together, and sharing all the fun. Some connect in the forest, and some in the dance hall.
Leadership Opportunities: Take a risk and sing a song, or support others as they do. There's plenty of opportunity to step out of the comfort zone.
Experiential Learning: Is it ok to dance? Is it ok to take a risk? Students get to experience amazing positive interactions around the dance hall.
Healthy Active Living: A night of dancing can really take it out of you! Students enjoy healthy activity as they dance the night away.
Community Building: Coming together to sing dance and share a laugh, the memories stay fresh as the community interacts and enjoys the party.