Discover how to keep a tent tidy

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment.
• 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.

Setting up this activity

• Find a couple of willing helpers among your Young Leaders or adult volunteers. They’ll be ‘tent detectives’ and check tents for good practice, safety and cleanliness. Detectives might like to use props, such as a magnifying glass
• Young people could also be tent detectives and might need help from an adult.

 Tidy those tents

1. Gather everyone together.
2. Ask if anyone knows how to keep their tent or sleeping area clean, safe and tidy. Let a few people share their ideas.
3. For older groups, you may just want to read through the rules, then see if anyone can think of anything else to add in.
4. For younger groups, write out the following rules on paper, or print them out, then hide them around the space:
   • All clothes should be put away, with clean and dirty items kept separately.
   • Shoes or boots should be taken off outside tents and stored where they can’t be tripped over.
   • Sleeping bags should be loosely rolled up during the daytime, so there’s space to move around.
   • Bedding should be kept away from tent edges, as they’re usually first to get damp when it rains. If possible, leave space between each other’s bedding so there’s room to move.
   • Wet clothes should be hung up to dry, and kept away from dry clothes and sleeping areas.
   • Any litter should be recycled or thrown away immediately.
   • Food, such as snacks, should be kept in airtight storage containers in the kitchen area.
5. Tell everyone that there are 7 rules hidden in the space that they need to find. You may want to add your own rules too. Let everyone have 10 or 15 minutes to find them.
6. Once they’ve all been found, choose some people to read them out. Ask if there are any other rules people could think of.
7. Place all the pieces of paper with the rules on somewhere where everyone can see them. 
8. Now, tell everyone you’re going to play some games or have a camp tent detective to make sure everyone can keep a tent tidy. 

Detective visits while on camp

1. Gather everyone together at the start of camp and remind everyone about what they need to do to keep the tent tidy. You may wish to have them as camp rules.
2. Explain that there’ll be tent detectives coming to check the tents and tell everyone who the detectives are. Everyone should be reminded that the detectives can visit anytime, so they should make sure their tent is always tidy.
3. Throughout the camp, the detectives should visit the tents in pairs at a quiet time when no-one is in the tents, such as during lunch or during an activity.
4. Detectives should have always be two adults, or with two adults, if they’re entering tents with young people inside.
5. The detectives could score or mark the spaces each day. They could leave stickers or post-it notes to tell people what they’ve done well, or you could have scoresheets for the different areas.
6. You may want to have an announcement at dinner-times to point out what could be better overall and praise good tents. You may want to have a tidy tent of the day or of the week, with that tent getting a prize.
7. Remind everyone in the group to make improvements to their tents and sleeping areas, and continue their good habits in case the detectives visit again.

Detective visits at sessions

1. Before the session, pitch some tents and add some items in them. 
2. In each tent, make sure that some things are untidy or messy, which people have to spot. 
3. Ask everyone to get into small teams.
4. There are several ways you can play this game in a session to practice keeping tents tidy: