Missing camp? Looking for a fun way to remind yourself of springs and summers past and future? Try out some of these activities to keep you busy at home and keep thoughts of fun adventures close.

This link will bring you to a PDF that you can print or work through on your computer.

Games Activity Book

We also have some fun teambuilding exercises that you can work on. Join Katie and Leah in some of these activities.

This is just one of many teambuilding exercises that can all be found here. Once you’ve finished these exercises, you can print off the certificate that says con”grad”ulations for completing all the exercises (signed by all of the Outdoor Education Staff!)

Have some fun and go brush your teeth!

Outdoor Ed Staff

Follow along as we explore nature together! You can download and print these journals as foldable or full-page journals, and there are activities for kids K-3 and 3-6! We have four weeks of journals for you to go through, with five new activities in each one to get you outside and exploring.

To learn how these work, watch our intro video:

Some activities will have accompanying videos, and they can all be found on this YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Yv-4HGXJU&list=PLY0iFlGhCI7IGiKE18XSHTdNMFGmw4_LF

Here are the PDFs to our nature journals!

K-3

Week 1

Journal – Week 1 half-size pages K-3

Journal – Week 1 full-size pages K-3

Week 2

Journal – Week 2 half-size pages K-3

Journal – Week 2 full-size pages K-3

Week 3

Journal – Week 3 half-size pages K-3

Journal – Week 3 full-size pages K-3

Week 4

Journal – Week 4 half-size pages K-3

Journal – Week 4 full-size pages K-3

4-6

Week 1

Journal – Week 1 half-size pages 4-6

Journal – Week 1 full-size pages 4-6

Week 2

 Journal – Week 2 half-size pages 4-6

Journal – Week 2 full-size pages 4-6

Week 3

Journal – Week 3 half-size pages 4-6

Journal – Week 3 full-size pages 4-6

Week 4

Journal – Week 4 half-size pages 4-6

Journal – Week 4 full-size pages 4-6

Be safe, get outside, and go brush your teeth!

- Outdoor Ed Staff

While we do like to be modest, we are confident when we say Silver Lake is one of the best Outdoor Education Centres in Ontario.

Best Staff: All of our staff have extensive training and experience in outdoor education.  In addition, many of them grew up attending our summer camp program and graduated from our 2 year leadership training program and know first-hand the positive impact outdoor experiences can have on the lives of students. We have extensive professional development opportunities for all year-round and seasonal staff. All staff have Standard First Aid with CPR and nearly half are lifeguards (all swimming and waterfront activities are supervised by lifeguards).

Best Food: Quality, homemade food is culturally significant to Mennonites…………….students and teachers will experience that first-hand while at Silver Lake! Freshly baked bread, homemade pizza, soups and sauces from scratch and the list goes on. Most of our food, including meats and produce, is sourced from local farmers or from one of our two gardens.  Yum Yum!

Best Facilities: Over the past 6 years, we have invested over one million dollars in our facilities and property including a new dining hall, renovated commercial kitchen, five new camper cabins (soon to be seven), new washrooms and plenty of program equipment from a new archery range and an expanded low ropes course to a water trampoline and sailboats.

Best Program: We’re constantly visiting other outdoor education centers, networking with other professionals and taking in conferences all in an effort to provide exceptional programming. At Silver Lake we develop the program and schedule to your specific learning outcomes. The best part………………we only serve one overnight group at a time!

Ready for the best? Call (519-422-3200) or email (rebekah@slmc.ca) Rebekah for more information and to book your class trip!

Over the last 6 years we have replaced all of our cabins with new, bright, well ventilated and insulated cabins. The cabins were designed by our good friend Alex Jenkins and were designed with the student experience in mind as well as the needs of accompanying teachers. The new cabins can best be described as a combination of beach-hut, tree-fort and chalet that provides bunk space in one large open area for students with a separate, private room for teachers all under one roof. These cabins have large blackboards on the front porches for lessons, slides as well as stairs) and a bouldering wall for those who still have energy at the end of the day.

Bees provide us with many things, as well as teach us lots. By having bees at Silver Lake we hope to make an impact both environmentally as well as educationally. The bees will help the pollination of our vegetable gardens, plants and trees around camp and hopefully provide us with a good crop of LOCAL honey for our kitchen.We also see that the bees are a highlight in our programming both during the summer as well as during school programs. We learn a lot about our natural world through the bees. We learn about insects and plants and the connection between the two and the role they play with our food through pollination. Life lessons such as communication, being a team player, task oriented, and adaptable, leadership and having a strong work ethic are easily learned by watching and knowing about the bee’s social structure in the hive. Please stop by or book your class for a tour of our bees and see what all the buzz is about.

Over the last few years, red worms have become an important part of our composting program.  Using 2,  8ft by 4ft bins the worms process 40-50 Litres of kitchen scraps per day!  That’s a lot of diverted waste – way to go Red Wigglers!

This is all thanks to Bentley from Redwormcomposting.ca in Elmira who generously donated us the worms 3 years ago and continually provides us with guidance on caring for and over wintering our worm friends.

We can’t wait for fall to spread all those wonderful worm castings on our gardens and start the whole process again next season.  Nature is amazing!

Leanne and the Outdoor Ed crew have been hard at it in the garden.  Groups have “enjoyed” spinach, radishes (actually they really did enjoy them), strawberries, raspberries, lettuce of all sorts, beans, garlic, carrots and our favourite………garden candies (aka: ground cherries). There’s plenty more to come including potatoes, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, a whole list of herbs from stevia to thai basil, fall pumpkins and more! What a tasty outdoor classroom!!

Vonn is the newest member of the Silver Lake Outdoor Ed team! He’s a 14 week old service dog who will be with us for the next 9 months. Vonn’s favourite activities include harassing Harley (14 year old dog who’s blind and deaf), chasing the chickens, raiding the garden, puncturing the tires on all of our bicycles and his favourite………….chewing socks from the lost and found. He’s also good at comforting homesick students!