In contrast to a school class working in a familiar schoolyard or park, a camp has a larger space, and usually more forested area. The progression therefore addresses more of the skills at the basic level of Orienteering USA's Skills Recognition Program, such as safety procedures and using your compass. It also leads more quickly to orienteering races and games.

This particular progression was designed for a camp where each session lasts 70 minutes, and campers choose daily whether to attend orienteering or another activity. This setup requires flexibility from the counselors facilitating the sessions, as they must accommodate both new and returning campers within the same activity. Some activities, like a Score-O, are well-suited to this format as they can scale in difficulty—for example, campers can choose how many checkpoints to visit within the time limit.

Below we first provide videos from our planning meetings with one camp, offering an overview of how the program works in practice. Then we describe the curriculum used at the camp. Please contact us if you have questions, or find anything missing.

Each lesson begins with a brief introduction to review or introduce key safety concepts. This is followed by group or pair activities, depending on the exercise—or, for more experienced campers, a solo challenge.

The program is structured in a 3+3 lesson format: two weeks with three sessions per week. The first week focuses on introductory exercises, while the second week builds on those foundations with more advanced activities.

In addition, we include orienteering games suitable for the entire camp—ideal for larger group sessions or special events.

Checkpoint flags will be set out at the start of each week and left in place. Activities throughout the week use different subsets of these flags for a variety of activities. In the second week, the flags will be relocated to more challenging positions to match the progression in skill level.

Leaders can choose which activities to run each day based on the needs and interests of the campers present. Repeating an activity is absolutely fine—campers can use the opportunity to improve their skills or assist others. Many activities also have variations that can be used on different days to keep things fresh and appropriately challenging.

Week 1: Introduction - Orienteering Basics

Animal-O: Use a clue sheet to find checkpoints in order

Symbol Relay: Understand map symbols and the features they represent

Description Relay: Understand control descriptions and the features they represent

Map Discussion: Discuss how orienteering maps represent the world

Map Walk: Walk around, matching real-world features with map symbols

Score-O: Visit all the checkpoints shown on your map

Compass Basics: Use a compass to go in the correct direction

Point-to-Point Orienteering Course: Complete a course using an orienteering map

Week 2: Development Sessions - Map Practice

Line-O: Follow the line and find unmarked checkpoints along the way

Star-O: Team up; hand off between checkpoints

Window-O: Use a compass to go in the correct direction

Poison-O: Visit only the checkpoints shown on your map

Point-to-Point Orienteering Course: Complete a course using an orienteering map

Relays: Text

All-Camp Games

Vampire-O: Visit all the checkpoints shown on your map

Equipment

The following is a list of equipment that should be purchased to run the lessons.

We also suggest creating 10-15 night controls. The reflective strip allows them to be seen in the dark, perfect for Vampire-O. Follow our step-by step guide on how to make them. These controls can also be used in place of flagging tape for a more "professional" touch.

Materials

Purple Pen

Purple Pen is a free course setting software for orienteering. Purple Pen makes it easy to design orienteering courses and their associated control descriptions. 

Downloading the software is simple via their website - https://purple-pen.org. However, it only runs on Windows. On Mac or Linux, a Windows emulator such as Parallels or VirtualBox is required. See here for more information on how to set this us.

How to use Purple Pen?

Check out this page for tutorials.