Irish children now spend more time looking at screens than any other activity. In fact, half of Irish kids spend less than thirty minutes playing outside after school and a whopping forty-five percent have never climbed a tree.
If you're one of 75 percent of adults who worry your children spend more time online with their virtual friends than they do playing outdoors, you're about to have an opportunity to give them a taste of the freedom and adventure we enjoyed when we were young.
Coillte's new after school programme Compass Club opens in 47 locations all over the country later this month. Far from the screens and sockets of modern life, the club takes kids on forest adventures in the great outdooras, where they learn everything from navigation, knot-tying skills and how to make a rope swing to how to build a shelter and toast a marshmallow on an open fire.
Supervised sessions also alleviate another common concern: 'stranger danger', which four in five mums and dads fear when their child plays outdoors.
Coillte research shows that most parents admit their children spend considerably less time outdoors than they did when they were kids. This worrying trend is leading to what has been termed ‘nature deficit disorder’ amongst a generation.
Children are missing out on life forming nature experiences. 48 percent have never gone walking in a forest with friends, while almost two in three have never pitched a tent, more than two thirds have never toasted marshmallows over a fire and almost three quarters (74 percent) have never sat around a camp fire. Eight in 10 Irish children have never used a compass.
Compass Clubs predominantly take place in Coillte forests and are designed to encourage exploration and discovery in a supervised environment, with small group sizes creating a greater sense of freedom.
The child-led courses are built on the principles of strengths based education and the syllabus is designed to develop problem-solving, critical thinking, inquiry and investigation, spatial awareness and sensory perception – all with a healthy dose of fun.
Further information on course locations and September start dates can be found here. Each school term has a different theme with new experiences and skills and Afterschool Courses are six weeks long, 12 hours with a two hourly session one afternoon per week. The cost is €120.
