Fun Native Games at the Crawford Lake Conservation Park, Ontario

For the past few years I have been helping to run a summer camp for kids in the city of Waterloo during one of the summer months. Working with kids make me feel young and I just love being with them.

We had a training camp for the leaders in Waterloo at the beginning of August and did quite a bit of planning. Currently, we are in our second week of the camp and we have fourteen volunteers for the two weeks of camp. Pretty amazing indeed!

Learning to Play the Native Stick Game from Al at Crawford Lake 

Our kids had a lot of fun last Friday when we visited the Crawford Lake Conservation Area in Campbellville, Burlington, and learned about the Native peoples of Canada.

Crawford Lake is a 230 acre park; it is also a world biosphere reserve with beautiful boardwalk surrounding a lake.




Crawford Lake is a heritage site with a 15th century reconstructed Iroquoian Village. We booked a half day program and Al, our guide, was great in guiding us through the long house where the Iroquois used to live and sharing with us the native culture and their games.   

 Al made quite an impression on the children; and they would certainlyl remember for a long time what they had learned on our visit to the recreated Iroquoian Village  and their culture. Al told stories about native culture and the children learned that:

1. The grandmother was the leader of the native Indian people
2. The average life expectancy for women was 39 and for men was 34
3  The three things that native young men must learn if they were to get married:  they must be able to hunt, fish and protect their village

 

Playing one of the Native games

The children had a fabulous time learning to play the native games.

Al taught us three native games:

-  La cross
-  Sticks
-  Three way pull.

Playing the Stick Game

The Stick Game - each person was given a number of sticks to hold with one hand.

He/she threw the sticks up in the air and tried to catch the sticks without changing his hand.

 Each player started with one stick and the number of sticks increased after each turn.

The person who could throw the sticks and catch the most number of sticks would become the winner. 

A Native Game - Three Way Pull

Three way pull - a stick was placed at equal distance on the ground where each person was standing.



A thick round rope was used for the game.










As the three people pulled, the first person  who was able to pull to his side and pick up the stick on his/her side was the winner.

It was a lot of fun!!! Hey, anytime we can get the kids away from video games, I think it's great!

R.T.
Crawford Lake Conservation Centre Ontario