Landmarks

Landmarks

Child and youth development follows a pattern. While every child is unique, there are similar needs and interests at various stages of growth.  These Landmarks, or key experiences, are especially powerful for each suggested age. They are supported by research in the Pathway to Stewardship and Kinship Guide.

We hope that children and youth will work their way through the Landmarks with their families, mentors and educators. But don’t worry if you start on the Pathway later in a child’s life – the benefits are still bountiful. There are 3-5 Landmarks for each age group.

Activity Ideas

Each Landmark has suggested activity ideas. These will help you get started. However, you may have your own ideas, and that’s fine, too!

Not every child develops in exactly the same way or at the same rate, and this is natural. The Landmarks that follow are based on broad trends of child and youth development. Each important step leads to larger, more complex concepts such as connections, compassion and community.

Birth - 3: Early Years

Explore outdoors together at least an hour a week. Regular visits to natural spaces benefit everyone.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

Infant

  • Lie on a blanket and watch the clouds; lie in the grass and look into the branches of a tree
  • Hold a feather, a stick, a rock, a flower, a leaf
  • Watch the birds fly by
  • Be “stroller explorers” with a parent or older friend; explore your neighbourhood and local park

 

 

Toddler/Preschool

  • Turn over rocks and logs to see what is underneath (put them back when you’re done)
  • Watch ants, beetles and other insects to see where they go
  • Dig in soil, wade in water, pick up sticks, roll in the grass, squeeze and play with mud
  • Climb, jump, hop, roll, laugh!
  • Enjoy “puddle duck days” in the rain together
  • Play make-believe, explore and imagine

 

Tips

When exploring outside:

    • Provide opportunities to explore
    • Tap into a child’s natural curiosity and sense of wonder; have fun together; ask “I wonder…”
    • Visit the same place frequently
    • Dress comfortably for all weather conditions; get raincoats and boots!
    • Provide time, space and materials for imaginative play and engagement
    • Provide experiences rather than “teaching” – let the child lead
    • Use positive and encouraging language: “Wow! Let’s try this. Feel how soft it is.”

 
Have positive experiences with animals at least twice each month. Guided positive interactions with animals help children understand the needs of other living things. Activity Ideas Choose an activity according to your child’s ability: Infant
  • Meet gentle dogs, cats and other pets
  • Watch birds come to a window-mounted birdfeeder
  • Make animal sounds
  • Visit zoos and parks and watch the animals
Toddler/Preschool
  • Care for pets; talk about what their needs are
  • Follow an insect for as long as you can; what is it doing?
  • Visit farms and zoos; pretend you are the animals you see
  • Look for worms and hold them in your hand
  • Watch birds, squirrels and other animals; try to learn the names of common birds and animals together with parents or other adults
Tips
    • Encourage a sense of respect for all living things – this is a foundation for developing empathy
    • Use “what” questions e.g. what is the animal doing, I wonder what it eats, what sounds does it make, what is it feeling today?

Sensory exploration is especially important in the early years; it helps us make deep connections to our world.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

Infant

  • Swing on a swing
  • Put your toes in the water
  • Watch kids playing in the park
  • Touch the things in your yard; sit or crawl in the grass with bare feet
  • Smell flowers, smell the rain, smell the grass and the earth
  • Clap your hands, bang sticks together, shake a rattle

Toddler/Preschool

  • Cup your hands behind your ears – what do you hear?
  • Be an “all around watcher” – what can you see by looking on all sides?
  • Make mud pies and decorate with flowers, grasses and leaves; sing songs
  • Experience rain and snow, smell flowers, splash in mud, feel tree bark, catch insects, dance together!
  • Read and look at picture books together, make animal sounds, make and taste foods, pick and taste berries (at a Pick-Your-Own farm or with a knowledgeable adult)
  • Jump in leaves, play hide and seek
  • Listen for bird song in the spring and insect song in the fall; can you imitate their sounds?
  • Help to create a sensory garden with plants such as lemon balm, chives, peppermint, bee balm, oregano, lamb’s ears

Tips

  • Senses help us to make deep connections with the world around us
  • Parents and caregivers can encourage young children to experience taste, texture, smell, temperature (weather), rhythm and music, colours and patterns (indoors and outside), sounds and language
  • Greening preschool playgrounds can not only provide great fun but provide for sensory and motor development in young children


4 - 5 years: Junior & Senior Kindergarten

Visit a favourite outdoor place each week throughout all seasons. Talk about what you discovered with a supportive adult. Develop a sense of the awe and wonder of nature by being outdoors in all seasons.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Adopt a tree – get to know one tree and visit it each week through every season. Take pictures, draw it – how does the tree change?
  • Visit an outdoor/nature centre
  • Participate in a nature scavenger hunt
  • Explore a natural area – what treasures can you find?
  • Create a nature table or a “wonder bowl” – add things that you find each season – seeds, leaves, buds, special rocks, shells, fossils, feathers
  • Throw a hula-hoop into a meadow. How many living things can you find inside the hoop?
  • Explore under rocks, logs and leaves – what can you find? Put them back when you’re done
  • Look up; what do you see? Watch the clouds; watch the stars; watch the moon
  • Follow an animal’s tracks with an adult after a fresh snowfall – who made the tracks? Where did it go? What was it doing?

Tips

  • Explore patterns, textures, materials
  • Follow the child’s interest
  • Share names and stories for the things you see
  • Look for treasures in nature
  • Encourage feelings of comfort and safety outdoors


Help to plant or harvest a garden and/or look after an animal. Develop empathy by watching and caring for living things.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Start a planter box in a window sill
  • Make a bird feeder and watch who visits it
  • Set up a simple aquarium. Raise goldfish
  • Look after a pet rabbit, mouse or other animal
  • Set up a terrarium
  • Create a small food garden or a pollinator garden outside; make a container garden if you don’t have a garden plot
  • Raise chicks or butterflies
  • Set up a bird bath and put in clean water every week; who visits it?
  • Have people who care for animals visit your class (Ontario Turtle Conservation, Wildlife rehabilitation, farmers)

Tips

  • Encourage respect for all living things
  • Emphasize the enjoyment of interacting with living things
  • Ask inquiry-based questions: What does this eat? How does it move? Why is it this colour? I wonder how it’s feeling? Where is it going?


Play in nature for a full hour at least twice a week. Imaginative play is important to child development.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Make a fort – try using sticks, leaves, snow
  • Create a fairy garden
  • Make a mud kitchen
  • Build a simple natural play area
  • Collect twigs, pine cones, bark, sticks – make them into something fabulous!
  • Pretend you are…!

Tips

  • Imaginative play is important to child development
  • Allow plenty of time for unstructured, imaginative play
  • Provide a variety of places and materials for creative play (places to hide, logs and rocks to climb, materials for building etc.)


Share a nature-based picture book, song, nature poem and/or a game each week. Do more if you can. Stories, pictures, songs and games help children love and understand the natural world.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Invite environmental storytellers, singer/songwriters, puppeteers into your classroom/home
  • Spend time with people who love nature; make up stories about what you see outside
  • Visit the library and borrow some books about animals or outdoors – read them with a friend
  • Learn songs and finger games about animals and being outdoors

Tips

  • Focus on a variety of animals; people practicing stewardship and/or enjoying nature


 

Create at least one nature art project every week. The arts help children learn to express feelings about themselves and their world. Artistic exploration also helps to develop empathy. All children need opportunities for creative expression.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Sketch or paint a natural scene near your school or home. Visit it every season
  • Make a bird’s nest in the spring
  • Make stained glass windows in the fall using leaves, wax paper
  • Try simple nature weaving
  • Make simple nature sculptures out of natural material
  • Make a bark rubbing from a favourite tree
  • Try banging plant parts between pieces of paper with a mallet to see what colours you can make
  • Make “transient art” – draw a picture in the sand, make a picture along a trail with rocks or twigs
  • Paint with natural materials (grass, feather, twig) instead of a brush; try using crushed berries for paint

6 - 7 years: Grade One & Two

Choose an outdoor place in nature that is special to you. Visit this at least twice every month, and try to visit throughout a whole year. Deepen relationships and understanding. This is an important age for beginning to develop a sense of place – an outdoor space that is familiar and special.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Set up a micro trail. Bring a visitor and guide them through special spots along the way; did they notice something you didn’t see?
  • Use a magnifying glass – observe the veins of a leaf, the colours of a rock, the parts of soil, the petals of a flower
  • Make a colourful mural of all the things you saw in your special spot both living and non-living. Keep adding to this, each time you visit
  • Play ‘Imagine if’: Imagine if I was a tree, a rock, an ant, a chipmunk; make up a story from their point of view
  • Watch and keep a record of the animals who visit your special place. Do they act differently at different times of year?
  • Watch and keep a record of how the plants change over the year
  • Sit very quietly in your special spot for at least 15 minutes. Do you see or hear anything different when you are quiet?
  • Make an empty frame from cardboard. Hang this on a branch or on a string in your special spot. Where is the most beautiful view?
  • Name 5 natural sounds you can hear from your special spot

Tips

  • Physical activity continues to be very important. Children need plenty of time for active exploration in the outdoors – jumping, climbing, taking gentle risks with no adult “agenda”
  • Creative play grows from unstructured time outdoors
  • Natural curiosity and verbal skills produce many “why” questions – adult mentors are wonderful in providing simple answers that encourage further discovery and questioning
  • This is also a perfect age to find adult help in overcoming fears, such as snakes, spiders, darkness
  • Continue to develop and fine-tune the senses – looking carefully, waiting quietly, touching gently, listening intently

 

Plant, tend and harvest something you can eat (with help from an adult). Children benefit from help in learning how we are the same as other living things, and how we differ.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Try growing something like beans, lettuce or radishes (these are easier to grow than some other vegetables)
  • Watch your plant(s) grow. Who else visits or eats it? How fast does it grow? How can you help it grow? How does it taste when you eat it? Write a story with the plant talking
  • Prepare some of your vegetables in a meal for your family or friends (ask an adult to help you)
  • If some of your plant didn’t survive, what do you think happened? What would you like to try next time?
  • Watch a rock, a plant and an animal for two weeks; observe each day. How are they the same? How are they different? Which are alive, which are not? How can you tell? How do they change over time?

Tips

  • Reinforce and expand the developing sense of empathy
  • Caring for something alive involves thinking and talking about what it needs to be healthy. What happens to a plant without any water? Can it grow in the dark? What other living things interact with a plant? How do they affect it?

Find 3 ways to recognize and enjoy the change of each season. Celebrating seasonal changes strengthens a connection with the world around us. As a child’s understanding of time expands, notice and celebrate the changing seasons.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Take a picture of the same tree throughout each of the seasons. How is the tree the same? Different?
  • Learn about the Anishinaabeg seasonal ceremonies and on-the-land/water activities. Why are they important?
  • With an adult, make a list of outdoor activities that are unique to each season. During one full year, try at least two of those activities each season with friends or family. Here are a few ideas to get you started: make maple syrup in spring, sleep under the stars in summer, pick apples in fall, build a snow fort in winter
  • Make a display at home or at school with things that represent each season
  • Do something special for Earth Day
  • Celebrate the summer and winter solstice; what fun ways can you find to celebrate the year’s shortest and longest days?

 

Who else lives in your neighbourhood? Recognize that our community consists of other living things as well as people.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Do a neighbourhood scavenger hunt. Can you find 5 different plants and mammals/insects/birds living in your area? What makes each one different? Can you find a neighbourhood friend who can help you learn their names?

 

 

 

8 - 9 years: Grade Three & Four

 Travel by yourself or with a friend at least twice a week on a familiar route. This can include walking, riding your bike or travelling on public transit. Independent mobility builds self-confidence, environmental awareness, and the ability to make decisions and solve problems.

 

Activity Ideas

Encourage your child to choose from the following, according to their ability:

  • If you have a dog, planning a route and taking your dog on a walk is a great way to try travelling outdoors on your own or with friends. Ask your parents to help you plan a route to try
  • Try walking all or part of the way to school with friends
  • How much do you remember from your trips? Make a map, draw a picture, keep a journal
  • Research one of each type of thing that lives along your route: an animal, an insect, a bird, a flower, a tree. Talk to someone who can help you answer these questions:
    • What is its name?
    • What does it need to survive: food, water, space, shelter?
    • What is unique and/or special about each thing?
    • Does it have a special connection to another living thing (a squirrel needs trees for food)?
    • What changes along your route over time?

 

Try at least five different kinds of outdoor recreation that don’t require gasoline or electricity. Build skills for lifelong fitness and enjoyment of the outdoors.

Explore nature-based recreation for physical and mental health.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Try these activities: swimming, row boating, tobogganing, bicycling, skate-boarding, snowboarding, hiking, skating, tree climbing, building forts, bird watching, tent camping, insect catching
  • Make sure you try each one more than once! Which are your favourites and why?
  • Check out Otonabee Conservation’s “Things to do in Natural Areas”, or the Ontario Children’s Outdoor Charter for ideas

Explore the relationships between humans and other living things to develop a sense of place and belonging. Try: growing a garden, setting up a birdfeeder, catching insects, going fishing, and getting to know a habitat.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability:

  • Grow a small garden of your own. Try a container garden, a food garden, or a garden to benefit bees, butterflies or other living things. Write down what you did, what the weather was like, what living things visited, what you learned, what you would do differently or the same if you tried it again
  • Set up a birdfeeder at home or at school; watch it every day. Write down who visits, what you observe when they visit, how often they come, how they interact and anything else you notice. How many visiting birds can you learn by name?
  • Catch insects: go to a nearby pond, forest or meadow with a teacher or parent. Bring along a net and viewing jar – catch as many different kinds of insects as you can. How do they move? How do they breathe? Are they camouflaged? What do you think they eat? Put them back in their habitat when you’re done
  • Go fishing; write down where and when you go fishing, what you saw, what the water looked like, what bait you used, what fish you caught and what you did with them. Find out what kind of fish you caught or saw, what they eat and what eats them
  • Get to know a habitat. Visit one habitat – a forest, a meadow, a wetland. Walk along one straight line and make a quick list of everything you see: the flowers, bushes, trees, birds, insects. Make a mural of these living things. Include the sun, soil and water. Use string to connect one living and non-living thing to another and show how they are related. For example, a tree gets its energy from the sun, nutrients from the soil and water from the rain. It gives food to squirrels and birds. Insects live on its branches and bark

10 - 11 years: Grade Five & Six

 Every living thing needs energy (including you). Visit a place that uses 3 different kinds of renewable energy and investigate how it operates. Understand the essential role of energy in our lives.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according and go exploring!

  • Be an energy detective. Find out at home or at school what kind of energy is used for heating, cooling, lights, cooking and appliances. Using your electricity bills or meter, keep track of how much energy is used each day, each week, each month. How is that energy produced? Draw a map of where energy enters your home or school. What are the impacts of that source of energy? Make a plan to reduce the energy you use. Try out your plan and write a story about what happened
  • Explore how you and your family use energy for travel. Keep a record of how often you use a car, a bus, a bicycle or other means of travel. Make a plan to reduce your dependence on fossil fuels for travel
  • Explore renewable energy sources. What different types of renewable energy are there? (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric) Find someplace in the local community that uses at least 3 forms of renewable energy
  • Shipping food around the world uses a great deal of energy. Work with your family or class to prepare and eat a meal where most of the ingredients were grown nearby
  • Tour a hydroelectric generating station and/or solar farm or biogas facility
  • Try using an earth oven or solar cooker to prepare a meal

Try at least three new outdoor activities that don’t require fossil fuels. Include a sport, a craft and a survival skill. Develop more complex outdoor skills to overcome fears and develop a sense of confidence, identity and the history of the land and its people.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your child’s ability and head outside!

  • Try some new outdoor sports. Here are some ideas: canoeing, kayaking, cross-country skiing, archery, snowshoeing, geo-caching; which is these sports were first developed by First Peoples?
  • Work with an outdoor expert to learn to identify at least five different wild plants that are easy to find and safe to eat. How can you recognize them? Are there other similar plants?
  • Learn to make something from natural materials that you can use. Try building or weaving a mural, making a basket, building a pot, making a necklace or headband
  • Create an outdoor shelter for various seasons

 

Create a book, blog or video about a nearby natural area to encourage people to visit and appreciate it. Watch how people use the natural area and monitor the impacts they have on it. Explore human impacts on the environment through planning and implementing a community project that promotes natural spaces.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity suitable to your ability and head outside!

  • Use art, photography, literature and science to research and produce a field guide or trip guide
  • Invite local experts to share what they know about the place – its history, what lives there, its special features
  • Find and identify animal tracks in the natural area to help you learn who lives or visits there
  • Work with others to produce maps, artwork, stories or poems for your book to reflect what you learned and how you feel about the area
  • Think of ways to encourage others to visit the space and use the guide you have produced
  • Does the area change when people visit it? How can people have negative impacts? How can they have positive impacts?
  • Develop a plan with friends and/or family for protecting this natural area

Explore biodiversity by finding out what lives in a wetland, forest or meadow.  Expand understanding of the relationships between living things and their habitats.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity suitable to your ability and interests and get started!

With a parent, teacher or leader, go to a pond. Take along a net, magnifier and a pond field guide:

  • Dip your net in the pond. Try to find at least 10 different organisms that live there. Use a dichotomous key to help you. Go from the smallest (Daphnia, Hydra) to the biggest (diving beetles, frogs, tadpoles)
  • Learn the calls of 5 local frogs. Visit a wetland at night with a parent or leader and identify which frogs are calling. Go www.frogwatch.ca to report your findings. You’re participating in Citizen Science!
  • Explain 3 important roles of this wetland in the environment
  • Look at pond water under a microscope
  • Find out more about one turtle that lives nearby. 7 out of 8 Ontario turtles are listed as “species at risk.” Find out why. Make a turtle poster for the turtle you studied. Tell people what they can do to help protect turtles

Similarly, explore a different type of habitat:

  • Bring collection jars, magnifiers and field guides
  • How many different living things can you find? Take pictures of them and then let them go
  • How does this habitat sound different than a wetland?
  • Look under rocks or logs. Who lives there and why?
  • Try sitting very still in this habitat and close your eyes. Focus all your attention on where you are. How does it smell? Do you feel differently when you sit very still?

12 - 13 years: Grade Seven & Eight

Plan, conduct and evaluate at least two of: plan and map a local day trip, follow a local stream, plan and manage a school recycling or composting project, conduct a repair café, help to care for a living thing, and research a personal care or fashion product that interests you. Expand leadership and decision-making skills through planning and conducting projects to benefit the community. Develop a sense of hope, agency and empowerment through collective action.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity suitable to your ability and interests and get started!

  • Work with friends to plan and map a local day trip for a group using transit, bicycle, foot or boat travel. Mark at least 10 signposts on your map (unique features that identify the route). Take at least two other people on your trip. Write down or record what you did, who came along, how it went, what you ate, and what you saw and learned on the trip. Geocaching is a fun focus for a trip!
  • Follow a local stream with friends to see where it comes from and where it goes. Do you see any problems along the way (garbage, erosion, pollution)? Meet with a local expert to talk about what you could do to benefit the stream. Plan and conduct a stream rescue project with friends. Document what you did and monitor its success
  • Plan and manage a school recycling or composting project. Visit other schools to see what recommendations they have; document your project and evaluate your success. What challenges did you have? How could you overcome them?
  • Work with friends and experts to conduct a “Repair Café” where people can bring broken tools, bicycles or appliances to be repaired instead of discarded. Was this more difficult than you expected? Explore your experiences with photos or a blog
  • Help to care for a living thing over an extended period (a young child, a sick or aging friend or relative, foster a needy animal, volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation centre, a humane society, a garden or natural area, a farm). Document what you learned using photography and/or social media
  • Research a personal care or fashion product that interests you. What can you discover about how it is made, who works on producing it, what by-products are produced and what happens to it after it is used? Produce a report on its “product life cycle”. Did you learn anything that others should know? Make a plan to communicate what you learned, and advocate to reduce negative impacts

Learn about at least two other cultures by meeting and talking with someone whose culture is different from yours. Explore relationships and interconnections between human communities.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity and get started!

  • What does the word “culture” mean? Why is culture important? Describe in words, video, drama or artwork how you would characterize your family’s culture. How does your family celebrate its culture (food, ceremonies, traditions, stories etc.)?
  • Get to know someone whose background is First Nation, Métis or Inuit. How are their family’s stories different from yours? Talk with them about common interests you both have. Spend time together doing something you both enjoy
  • There are four First Nations communities in the Peterborough area. Each holds a Pow wow every year to celebrate their culture, and anyone is welcome to attend. Visit a Pow wow at one of these First Nations: Alderville, Curve Lake, Hiawatha, Scugog. Learn about the origins of the Pow wow, and the different dance styles and their meanings. Talk to dancers and attendees. Ask what Pow wow means to them. What did you learn from their ceremonies about their worldviews? What is their perspective towards the natural world?
  • Talk to someone in your community who has come from a different country or has a culture or religion that is very different from yours. Learn about their history, challenges, favourite foods, music they like, ceremonies or other traditions from their culture. Think of a creative way to represent what you have learned about their life journey

 Become a “Citizen Scientist” by participating in a community project to monitor the health of wildlife species. Explore tools for monitoring ecosystem health to deepen understanding of human/environmental interactions and potential solutions.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your ability:

  • There are many local initiatives to monitor the populations of various wildlife species. Collecting data is an important way to evaluate whether a species is declining or stable. Work with friends to research some of the current “Citizen Science” projects in your community, and participate in at least one of them. Some ideas include: Frogwatch, annual bird and butterfly counts, turtle sightings, Journey North, Ice Watch
  • Contact regional First Nations communities to ask about manoomin (wild rice) monitoring and harvesting, trends in wildlife population numbers and the causes of changes

Design your own healthy home. Expand understanding of sustainable lifestyles.

Activity Ideas

  • Can you design the ultimate energy efficient, healthy home (healthy for the planet and for humans)? Use materials at hand to create a 3-dimensional model. Try to incorporate natural materials, passive solar design, rainwater harvesting, renewable forms of energy, new ways to treat wastewater and human waste. In what way can your house emulate natural systems? What will happen to your house when its useful life is over?

14 - 15 years: Grade Nine & Ten

Deepen your understanding of how modern lifestyles affect the environment. Expand leadership and problem-solving skills by seeking solutions to ecological imbalances. Develop hope and empowerment by exploring the potential for people to have a positive impact on the environment.

Activity Ideas

  • Calculate your ecological footprint
  • Research how Canadian lifestyles consume global resources, and how this compares with other countries
  • What does sustainability mean?
  • Document some of the ways that Canadians could live more sustainable lifestyles
  • Make a goal for yourself on reducing your ecological footprint. Try it for a month and assess how successful you’ve been. See if you can reduce your footprint in other ways. Get your family involved too
  • Draw a “mind map” of all the ways that you affect your environment and how it affects you; are there ways that you have a positive impact on your environment?
  • Explore how your school could reduce its ecological footprint. Is there a plan for energy or water conservation? Waste reduction? Local habitat protection or enhancement?
  • Research the “Footprint of Delight” concept that measures the positive impacts we can have. Do you think it is a useful addition to the Ecological Footprint concept?

 Explore and develop at least three outdoor skills that are new to you. Develop identity, expand skill, confidence and responsibility through outdoor recreation, creativity and survival skills.

Activity Ideas

Choose an activity according to your ability:
  • Try learning how to make a fire without matches or paper. Learn about fire safety and how to be responsible with fire when outdoors
  • Learn about wild/natural foods in your area. Fishing, hunting and edible wild plants can all provide nutrition. Make sure you check out the hunting and fishing regulations in your area. Research the meaning of sustainable harvest. How can the environment provide our needs without being damaged by human impact? Talk to Indigenous hunters, fishers and trappers to learn their perspectives on harvesting wild foods
  • Spend time with an expert to learn how to track animals. What did you learn about the animals’ lives and habits?
  • Expand your skills with advanced canoeing, kayaking, backpacking, cross country skiing or white water rafting
  • Learn how to find your way in a natural area using maps, compass and/or GPS
  • Learn how to recognize at least two constellations in the night sky in each of the four seasons. Learn how to tell the four directions using clues in the sky
  • Learn new skills in sustainable food production

Volunteer to help in your community in at least three different ways. Reflect on what you learned through music, poetry, a blog, journal, or social media. Exploring and responding to local social and environmental issues can expand abilities for social analysis, understanding and empathy.

Activity Ideas

  • Help someone younger than you to learn outdoor skills or games
  • Help with the Peterborough Children’s Water Festival in May; contact the Sacred Water Circle to learn about Indigenous teachings about water, and to find out how you can help
  • Visit someone in a senior’s residence and ask them to tell you stories from their childhood; record their stories for a local museum or historical society
  • Get to know someone who is differently abled than you; learn about some of the challenges of being blind, deaf, physically or mentally challenged. Work together to develop a plan to raise public awareness and response to differing abilities in your community
  • Volunteer on a farm or with an agricultural project with historical roots (e.g. Flint Corn Project)
  • Help to create a schoolyard garden or natural area in your own school or a nearby elementary school. Work with teachers, students, parents, neighbours, school staff and administration. Document the progress and results of the project
  • Volunteer in a natural area to help with trail maintenance, ecological restoration or control of invasive species
  • Help with a community tree-planting project. Participate in planning, planting, maintenance and monitoring. Do you think it was a successful project? Would you make any changes in future projects?
  • Help with ecological monitoring through water quality testing, Frogwatch, bird banding or other local projects

Plan and go on an extended trip in a wilderness area for at least 3-5 days. Options for travel include: canoe, bicycle, skis, hiking, snowshoeing or any other self-propelled mode of travel. Advanced outdoor experiences (including planning, leading and evaluating) are important in enhancing leadership, conflict resolution, teamwork and decision-making. Respected mentors are important role models for these activities.

Activity Ideas

  • Decide where and when your trip will take place
  • Decide what type of gear you will need and how you will access it
  • Plan how you will get to your starting point
  • Plan your meals
  • What safety concerns should you consider, and how will you address them?
  • Plan to leave cell phones or other electronic equipment at home (unless used solely in case of emergency)
  • Write about your trip afterwards – what you liked, challenges you experienced and how you dealt with them. What did you learn about yourself and others you travelled with? What would you change for a future trip? What would you do the same? What else did you learn from this experience? What impacts did your trip have on the environment?

16 - 17 years: Grade Eleven & Twelve

Help to rehabilitate something that has been damaged – such as an animal, waterway or natural area – over an extended period of time.  Note:  Wildlife rehabilitation requires special permits and training, so be sure to work with an accredited rehabilitation centre for any work with animals.

Young adults can expand a sense of collective responsibility through identifying and seeking solutions to local environmental issues.

Activity Ideas

  • Learn about what has caused the damage
  • Work with an expert to decide on a suitable plan of action
  • Help to organize and conduct a rehabilitation plan
  • Document the process through a blog, photo essay, documentary or piece of artwork
  • Monitor the project after the rehabilitation and explore its effectiveness

Explore a local social justice issue and develop a plan to raise public awareness or motivate public involvement. Experiential learning, hands-on and in the community, is an effective way to promote leadership, confidence, empowerment and agency. Working with peers helps to harness energy and motivation.

Activity Ideas

  • Identify a local social issue that concerns or interests you. Examples may include homelessness, poverty, racial discrimination or age discrimination
  • Explore the issue with a local expert and/or teacher. What are the underlying factors? How can the community work toward resolving the problem? What skills are needed to make a positive change? What role could young people play in helping?
  • Work with friends to plan and conduct a response using creative communication (social media, street theatre, photography, youth summit, letters to elected officials, film etc.) Propose a solution and explore how to put it into action.

Write an autobiographical essay or create an art installation describing your ecological self. Explore and develop bio-centric (rather than human-centred) views of the world.

Activity Ideas

  • Describe or illustrate how you view yourself in relation to nature/creation/the environment. Include some experiences influencing your relationship to nature
  • Try making a “mind map” of the connections between yourself and the natural world to help guide your essay or artwork
  • Imagine yourself ten years ago. How has your ecological identity changed in the past ten years? How do you think it will change in the future?