Fun, games, adventure, learning by doing
Activities
Activity categories
These are the main categories of activities we offer. The ones mentioned under each category are just examples activities. We keep inventing new activities and we have quite a lot of easy-to-dy activities that you can do without an instructor.
Some of the activities are mainly offered in our centre summer camps, but please ask the centre office which activities are available if you visit Houens Odde outside of our Centre Summer Camps.
Nature & environment
Nature and environmental activities have always been present at the centre. But over the past few years we have been even more committed to providing exciting and contemporary activities.
This has most recently culminated with the establishment of our new Nature and Environmental Lab, which acts as the home of all our activities and communication in this field.
Nature & environment lab
The hub for all our nature & environment activities. Get up close with nature. Here you’ll find microscopes and all the field gear you will need to explore the nature at Houens Odde. And check out our interactive nature exhibition.
Activities
Explore nature at Houens Odde. There are open fields, woods, water holes, marsh and coast where land and aquatic animals can be caught, trees examined and plants studied. Get close to nature with the nature activities.
Some activities are carried out in the scout group as self-lead activities, others with a staff member who can guide.
We can adjust most activities to fit different age groups.
Among the activity offers may be:
- Learn about small sea animals
- Cormorrant bingo
- Use the microscopes
- Measure the height of a tree
- Fishing with rod
- Find animal tracks
- Catching crabs
- Make a bug-suction device
- Bird watching
- Nature Bingo
- Forest Hiking
- Plastic hunt
- Nature Park Lillebælt activities
- …. and much more
Environmental activities
SCENES stands for Scout Centers of Excellence for the Nature, Environment & Sustainabillity, and is an international collaboration regarding eco- and environmental aware scout centres can be part of (read more about SCENES).
In connection to this, we have developed a number of exciting activities, where scouts at the same time can gather knowledge about the environment and sustainability.
Sea activities
Houens Odde is a peninsula situated i Kolding Fjord. This means we can offer great sea activities both on shallow waters and with deeper waters under the keel.
Sea activities
As activities the center offers raft building and sailingboats, canoeing, accommodation on a large raft or a trib on our large motorized raft.
For scouts aged 13 and above, we aso offer kayaking i sea kayaks or sit-on-top kayaks.
Some sailing activities are lead by the leaders of your own group, while others must be managed by the center’s volunteer staff.
Adventure
The adventure activities leaves room for the element of competition. Hit the mark with bow and arrow or try to climb to the top in the trees or in our special climbing equipment.
Climbing & archery
Achery
Try a special challenge for scouts from 11 years and up. Hit the mark in archery. Here it is the performance of the individual scout that counts, but when competing as a group, the individual’s performance also matters for the overall group.
Be aware that the equipment requires some physical strenght to use.
Climbing
Get to the top in the big beech trees at Houens Odde.
Climb the top of a tree with the guidance of one of the Scout Center’s volunteer Houmen or try to follow a specific path up the trees.
The climb takes place with safe and modern climbing equipment.
All climbing activities are led by a certified climbing instructor.
One2Tree climbing park
Climb to the top of the trees and see the forrest from up high. Try our team work climbing activities on the Jacobs latter or the stick-tree, Our climbing park “One2Tree” is a fun and challenging activity.
Handicrafts
Mosehuset & the blacksmith are the creative workshops at Houens Odde. Test your skills in a variety of crafts and make something you can use at camp or take home and be proud of.
The "Mosehus"
There are plenty of tools in the building called “Mosehuset”, and you can work with either wood, leather, coconut shells, horns and bone, wool and soapstone, and we have activities and challenges for all age groups. There are volunteer center staff – Houmen – who guide the activities, but scout leaders are expected to assist the scouts with the activities.
We have a wide selection of materials, including:
- Leather work
- Woodcut in fresh birch wood
- Work with horns, bone and coconut shells
- Work with wool, felt, cord and yarn
- Candle making
Near the Mosehuset there is a campfire and a primitive oven for cooking activities. There are recipe folders in the Mosehus, but scout leaders have to shop groceries and run the activity themselves.
Blacksmith
Next to the Mosehus the blacksmith is situated. Here we offer blacksmithing activities for scouts of 11 years or older.
Take a piece of iron, heat it up and shape it with the forge hammer into a spike, a pot hook, or anything else you need. Get control of how a piece of iron becomes a useful product when heated in the ace and hammered into shape on the anvil.
With molten tin, jewelery can be cast, which afterwards can be polished with file and sandpaper. Use a finished shape or create a shape with motifs from a ring, button or coin.
Teambuilding
Learn to collaborate in the group or patrol to achieve the best results. The activities are mainly for scouts of 11 years or older.
Teambuilding activities
There will be guidance in the team building activities and the cooperation and the role of the individual will be evaluated.
The activities can be things like:
- Toxic waste mission in a radioactive area.
- Pipeline – coordination and patience.
- Construction via radio communication.
– and more…
International
Houens Odde International Scouting Centre – Northern Europe’s largest scouting center! As an international scout centre, you have a unique opportunity to try your hand at a variety of cool activities. You can even earn yourself badges by participating in some of our activities.
International activities
Goose Game
Join The Goose Network on a visit around Europe to meet scout centres. Did you know, for example, that Sweden has a scout centre that is a whole island? The tour takes place in the patrol, which compete with others in fun activities from different countries, to the tones of atmospheric music – the best globetrotters will win!
Kolding Adventures
Where does the hike go? King Christian the 4th of Denmark grew up in Kolding, living at Koldinghus. Take part in an exciting city tour around Kolding, where the patrol will have ample opportunity to play tourists using Instagram. As a reward, you have the opportunity to buy cool badges to show that you have completed the Kolding Adventures trip.
You, me and us
International activities are not just for the bigger scouts. You, me and us are pulling the big world down to the eyes of the smallest scouts, and is giving the scouts an understanding of being part of a huge community. Use your creative skills, listen to a good story and learn something new.
Demos Cratos
Demos Cratos is a game about building societies, made as part of the KFUM Scouts in Denmark’s collaboration with the Tunisian Scout Movement. The game requires thoughtfulness, good physics and a good relations – who will build the best community?
Theater & music
Our Drama and music activities consist primarily of so-called “box-activities” which are managed by the camp participants themselves.
Theater and music
Our theater- and music activities are mainly “do-it-yourself”. They can act as a small fun activity at your camp site, or in a break – or as part of your own planned activities.
Our basements abound with costumes, makeup and props.
When there is life at the center, you may therefore encounter “military people”, princesses, orcs, pirates, retirees, hippies, smugglers and many other characters.
If you want to try improvisational activities, we have some activity cards with instructions that you can borrow.
We also have some boom-whackers – plastic tubes, each of which emit a certain tone when striking them against the body.
About activities at the centre summer camps
All our staff are unpaid volunteers spending a camp week at Houens Odde doing activities for the camp participants.
Therefore we ask for your understanding, that not all activities are necessarily offered every week.
We aim for having trained instructors in all activity areas, but if the relevant competencies are not present amongthe staff during the week you are attending, we may not be able to offer this specific activity. But we always do our best to ensure as wide a range of activities as possible.
Some of our activities are “do-it-yourself”, which means, there will not be an instructor present, but you will receive an easy-to-do instruction manual and the equipment you need to do the activitity.
To make activities run smoothly, we expect scout group leaders to help out at bit.