Outdoor Learning Winter Challenge 2024

The 2024 Winter Challenge has now concluded. Thank you to everyone for their enthusiastic participation, and we’ll see you in 2025! Feel free to come back and reference the resources and activities anytime you need some outdoor inspiration.

This annual initiative encourages educators and learners to embrace the season and get outside, no matter the weather. Each year, we showcase some of the many activities that can be enjoyed outdoors, even in the very coldest months! But you don’t need to be an expert to have fun.

Scroll down for resources, our snowman contest, amazing activities and prizes!

Looking for more? Check out the bountiful inspiration offered by our official hashtags on social media: #TMOWinterChallenge & #DéfiHivernal.

Welcome to the 6th annual Take Me Outside Winter Challenge! It’s simple to join in. Here’s what you need to know to get started:
  1. Register! Scroll down or click this link, fill out the quick form, then read on for resources to get started, join in, and win awesome prizes.
  2. Contribute! Add your favourite winter outdoor learning activity to our crowd-sourced collaborative guide on Padlet. Educators who leave their name and are registered for the Challenge will be chosen at random to win toques from #NatureForAll and gift cards to the Outdoor Learning Store. This is in partnership with the #NatureForAll Love Fest – a celebration of inspiring love of nature across the world.
  3. Go Outside! This is the most important step! You and your learners spend as much time outside as much as possible between Feb 19th – March 1st, whether it’s once, or every day. If you’re looking for ideas, start at the Resource section of the Challenge webpage. Bonus: You can use this fun tracker sheet to colour in each day you spend time outside.
  4. Create! It’s never to early to start dreaming up the best snowpal anyone has ever seen! We suggest first checking out all the details, rules and prizes here. Then, get out there and build for a chance to win some amazing prizes from Mountain Equipment Company.
  5. Inspire! Share with others on social media with the hashtag #TMOWinterChallenge! We’ll be giving away prizes every single day of the Challenge! Follow us for more on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you don’t use social media, you can email your adventures to info@takemeoutside.ca.
  6. Prizes & Discounts! A big thanks to MEC, OLS and #NatureForAll for their support and prize contributions!

 

    


Register

Registration closed for 2024. See you next year!


Resources

Getting Started & Risk Assessment

Infographics from the Child & Nature Alliance of Canada (click for full size): Tips for the Cold

Infographic from Active for Life (click for full size): Dressing Kids for Winter

Full article: “10 tips to make sure kids dress warmly enough in winter” (https://activeforlife.com/tips-to-dress-for-weather/)

Infographics from the Black in Nature (click for full size): Identifying Hypothermia in People with Darker Skin Tones – English & French

Outdoor Play & Learning Toolkit for Elementary Teachers

Tips, Tricks, and Lesson Ideas for Winter Outdoor Learning

Infographics from OutGrown (click for full size): Winter Adventures Basics – English & Spanish

Educator Learning

What to Wear for Winter (video)

Lynx shares a brief description of what kind of clothing and layering should be considered for taking students outside.

What’s in Your Backpack? (video)

In this short outdoor learning video, Lynx shows teachers what she packs in her backpack when taking students outside during the winter.

Canadian Wildlife Federation: Below Zero

Winter is a vital part of our Canadian heritage, our traditions, and in some respects, our livelihood. While we may not always appreciate mounds of snow and freezing temperatures consistent with a Canadian winter, the fact is winter plays an important role in helping maintain ecological balance in the ecosystems on which both humans and wildlife depend.

Game of Groans: Winter is Coming! (webinar recording)

Dave Quinn is a BC-certified teacher, certified wilderness guide, and wildlife biologist who has led expeditions across the globe. He believes outdoor learning year-round offers a host of social, mental, and academic outcomes for students of all ages, and is happy to provide ideas, tips, and tools to help others find success throughout the year.

Get Outside: Learning Outdoors in Winter (webinar recording)

Pamela Gibson from Learning for a Sustainable Future shows the plethora of interesting, motivating curriculum connections winter offers – and it’s easier than you think! Her passion is making curriculum come alive through experiential learning, and helping students feel a sense of belonging and love for the earth, connected to nature and community.

Resource Databases & Activities

2023 Winter Challenge Activity Guides

A different engaging activity for each day of the Challenge – sure to give you an idea or two! We hope this inspires you to try something new, get creative, and head outside. But most importantly… have fun! If you’re looking for even more ideas, check out what we did during each day of the 2022 Winter Challenge here.

TMO online resource library

Offering over 160 resources in a plethora of topics, this database is a great place to start for ideas and activities. Search by keywords or scan the page, and you’ll surely leave inspired!

Resources for Rethinking

This program of Learning for a Sustainable Future offers a searchable database of over 1200 resources, and is available in French too! They also publish regular nature guides which follow the seasons and offers numerous starting points for learners of all ages in a variety of subjects.

Evergreen Winter Activities

10 fun and easy outdoor winter activities for kids! Keep your learners outdoors and entertained this winter break with these engaging and accessible activities, curated by Evergreen’s team of Outdoor Educators.

Active for Life: Physical Literacy Development

Active for Life is a Canadian not-for-profit social initiative created to help give children the right start in life through the development of physical literacy. Three lists to start off from their extensive library: Outdoor winter activities for kids when there’s no snow; 29 fun games kids can play in the snow; Creative activities across Canada to beat the winter blues.

Lessons in Grass: Winter Activities

Go out even in winter… We have an activity for every single day!

8 80 Cities Winter Placemaking Guide

The snowy season is here; why dread it, when we can embrace it! Winter placemaking is the active reimagining and repurposing of parks and public spaces during our coldest season to make winter an inviting and social time of the year for everyone.

Winter Challenge Posters

Click to zoom in and save!

For PDF version to print, copy & paste: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bc9ERASHQRvyEvNdXHbXKUaihW7Q4-UM/view?usp=drive_link

Related Winter Events

#NatureForAll Love Fest

The #NatureForAll Love Fest focuses on bringing together, sharing, and celebrating personal stories throughout February from around the world about love for Nature and how that feeling inspires us to conserve it.

Great Backyard Bird Count

Birds are everywhere, all the time, doing fascinating things. Join us, February 16–19, 2024, when the world comes together for the love of birds. In as little as 15 minutes notice the birds around you. Identify them, count them, and submit them to help scientists better understand and protect birds around the world.

Out Grown: Winter Walks with Wox

Can you aim to spend 10 minutes outdoors each day all month long? There’s SNOW reason to stay indoors! Join Out Grown this February for our Winter Walk with Wox! It’s free, it’s fun, and the benefits of time outside are yours to keep. We’ve got lots of fun activity ideas to inspire you, a tracker for your progress, and you can join our community pages to stay motivated daily!

Arctic Winter Games

The Arctic Winter Games are a biennial multi-sport and cultural event hosted by contingents in the Arctic region, specifically focusing on circumpolar communities from areas like Canada, Alaska, Kalaallit Nunaat, and Northern Scandinavia. More than just a sporting competition, the Arctic Winter Games inspires athletes, artists, and communities to come together to celebrate the Circumpolar North.

Carnaval de Quebec

A population often faced with harsh winters decided to put on a snow festival to warm their hearts. The tradition of celebrating from the end of January until mid-February has been around for a long time! In Quebec City, the world’s snow capital, the first major winter carnival made its debut in 1894.


Activities

Educators: We want to hear your favourite winter outdoor learning activities!

Click here to head to our collaborative Padlet – share, get inspired, and head outside!

Educators who leave their name and are registered for the Challenge will be chosen at random to win toques from #NatureForAll and gift cards to the Outdoor Learning Store. This is in partnership with the #NatureForAll Love Fest – a celebration of inspiring love of nature across the world.

Be sure to scroll through each of the grade options to add your activity where it best fits.


Snowman Contest

If anything gets you outside throughout the Challenge, we hope it’s this! We’re hosting a friendly competition to see which learners can dream up the very best creation in all the land! Read on for some important details and rules:
  • This can be a snowman, snow pal, snow creature – you name it! Feel free to get creative and think outside the box. It should be some kind of character; something you can give a name to!
  • If you don’t have snow where you are right now, don’t worry! You can use other materials like clay, sand, wood, rocks, etc. We personally love natural, found, and foraged materials, but we’re open and excited to see what you dream up.
  • You can build and submit your snowpal anytime during the Winter Challenge (Feb 19 – Mar 1, 2024). Either tag us on social media, use the hashtag #TMOWinterChallenge, or email us at info@takemeoutside.ca.
  • Learners are encouraged to be in the photos with their creation, but it is not required.
  • If you build more than one, you may enter multiple times! Each will be judged separately. The prizes will be sent to the supervising educators (not the learners), who may allocate it as they see fit.
  • Prizes are as listed in the poster, and will be in the form of gift cards to Mountain Equipment Company. The prizes cannot be traded for cash, and must be used either in store or online through MEC official stores.
    • 1st place: $500; 2nd place: $300; 3rd place: $200.

Prizes

There are three unique ways to win prizes during the #TMOWinterChallenge:
  1. We want to know your favourite winter outdoor learning activity! Add to our crowd-sourced collaborative guide! Educators who leave their name and are registered for the Winter Challenge will be chosen at random to win toques from #NatureForAll and gift cards to the Outdoor Learning Store. This is in partnership with the #NatureForAll Love Fest – a celebration of inspiring love of nature across the world.
  2. Dream up the most imaginative and unique snow pal anyone has ever seen – then get out there and build it for a chance to win some amazing prizes from Mountain Equipment Company! We suggest first checking out all the details, rules and prizes here.
  3. Share with others on social media with the hashtag #TMOWinterChallenge! We’ll be giving away $50 gift cards to MEC every single day of the Challenge! Follow us for more on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you don’t use social media, you can email your adventures to info@takemeoutside.ca.

Bonus! Just for signing up, you’ll receive a 20% discount on everything at the Take Me Outside store, and 5% off at the Outdoor Learning Store. Check your confirmation email for all the details.


Partners

Thank you to Mountain Equipment Company, the Outdoor Learning Store, and Nature For All, for their generous prize donations for Winter Challenge participants!

    

We couldn’t do this without all of our amazing Outdoor Learning Partners. Check out the full list here!


Looking forward to seeing all of your outdoor adventures from February 19th to March 1st! #TMOWinterChallenge

And feel free to email us anytime: info@takemeoutside.ca