Navigate from a distance online

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.
• This is a great activity to run during an online session. Check out the advice on using Zoom and other popular digital platforms and the guidance on being safe online.

Setting up this activity

• Find you’re a location on the map in front of you and circle it. Then make a copy the map so the location is as close to the centre of the page as possible, you could take a photo, photocopy/scan or use OS Maps online.
• Send a copy of this map in an email to everyone or make enough copies for each person and send them out before the meeting. If sending it in an email, ask parents/carers to print a copy off before the meeting.
• On one of the copies, highlight any map symbols on the page such as churches, schools, or car parks. You only need to highlight one of each symbol. If you’re not sure what they look like, check the legend on the map or watch this Ordnance Survey video.
• Draw or print out copies of the symbols you found on the map. Label them and have them available to show everyone during the meeting. 
• Choose symbols or landmarks that are north, south, east and west of the circled location. Make sure that people circle them in step three or six, so you can use them in the final part of the activity.
• Ask everyone to bring pens, paper and a compass to the meeting.
• If needed, have a look at the Play map reading six-figure bingo activity to learn about how to read a six-figure grid reference.

Navigating with your map

1. Explain to everyone that they will be looking at maps and symbols.
2. Ask everyone to look at the map to see what they can find. When ready, name a landmark or area they know is on the map, such as a river or a train station and ask everyone to find it on the map. When they have found it, ask them to circle it with their pen.
3. Repeat this a few times so everyone knows what to do.
4. Now, ask everyone to find the location circled on the map.
5. Hold up to your camera a picture of a map symbol they haven’t already found and tell everyone to find this on the map in front of them.  When they find it, they should circle it and show it to the camera for everyone else to see.
6. Repeat this until you have found all the symbols you have picked out on your own copy of the map.

Navigating with your compass

1. Explain that compasses help people figure out which direction they’re travelling in. You could give people the chance to tell you everything they already know about compasses before you explain.
2. Ask everyone stand up, put their compass in their hand, and hold it flat.
3. Everyone should turn around on the spot until the small red needle matches up with the big red needle. Explain that everyone’s facing north. Everyone should turn around slowly to go through the east, south, and west.
4. Ask everyone to sit back down, take their piece of paper and lay it landscape on the table. They should place their compass on their paper and spin both round at the same time until they find north.
5. Choose four symbols on their map: one that’s north of the circled location, one that’s east, one that’s south and one that’s west. If there aren’t four symbols, pick landmarks, such as a park or car park.
6. Call out a direction and ask everyone to look at their maps and find a circled symbol, landmark or area in that direction from the circled location. Once they’ve found it, they should call out their answer. Keep the pictures of the symbols close by in case you need to remind anyone which symbol they are looking for.
7. Keep going until you’ve covered all four directions at least once.