Outdoor rural expedition 'Feel the forest'

Aims of the tool

To learn and improve survival skills
To get to know the nature
To promote creativity
To encourage teamwork

Description of the tool

This outdoor group activity is for young people to reconnect with the nature by touching, feeling, searching, using the nature. To do that, they need to complete tasks including what people forgot about the nature.

Tasks:
1. Forest creature. People have to illustrate forest creature that has only 5 legs and 2 arms (for 7 people, the more or the less people there are the number of legs and arms changes). This means that these are the only spots where they are allowed to touch the ground. They have to take a photo to prove it.

2. Identifying animals and plants. The groups has to find 5 different animals and 5 different plants and take a pictures of them.

3. Find a geocache. They have to find a cache - a compass in a container, which will be used for another task.

4. Blind challenge. One person has to lead his blindfolded friends to the next checkpoint.

5. Barefoot and silence challenge. People have to take off their shoes and go to the next checkpoint in a silence and barefooted. Also they have to record a video.

6. Forest Burjkalifa. At the checkpoint they will find a stone and the task is to put a stone as high as possible using just forest materials, like branches(not to put it on a tree).

7. Meet the flint stone. They have to find a flint stone by using the compass. There will be a checkpoint near the tree and from the tree to the cache will be 17 metres, where they have to use the compass to lead them to the cache.

8. Magic fire. The final spot will be at a fireplace and they have to light up the fire from the flintstone and woods.

Technology used:
- Actionbound app
- Geocaching technology

This Actionbound can be access following this link:
https://actionbound.com/bound/dragonforest

Debriefing:
1. Agreeing on confidentiality
2. Find objects from the nature that reflects the following:
- What has happened, how did you feel?
- What were the things you enjoyed the most?
- What challenge did you find the most difficult?
- What exactly was challenging, did you face any kind of frustration? Can you find the reason for it?
- What did you learn form the journey?
- What will be useful for your daily life?

4. Sharing the experience
5. Closing up (feedback, leave behinds, keeps)

This activity is based on the innovative method of Expedition. Complete description of this method is available from NGO 'Nectarus': http://www.nectarus.lt/en/english-expeditions-learning-on-the-move/