Finding North: a fun hiking game for kids

Suitable for

This is a fun outdoor activity for younger or middle primary / elementary school aged kids. Jewel was 9 and Bumble Bee was 6.5 years old here.

Fun facts

We have an internal compass
You may have heard about the five basic senses: sight (visual), sound (auditory), smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory) and touch (tactile). But did you know that there are actually three more? They are body movements (vestibular), body awareness (proprioception) and interoception.

It’s our body movements, or vestibular, sense that helps us on our hikes, as it acts like an internal compass in our brains. Inside our brains, we have a ring of head direction cells, and they fire off when our head faces one way or another. This helps us keep track of where we’ve been (so we can find our way back if we need to!) So if you know which way north is at one point of a hike, you might be able to use your vestibular sense, or internal compass, to keep track of your twists and turns, and be able to guess which way north is later on. {You can find more detailed info on our internal brain compass here.}

The sun travels in a predictable arc across the sky
Another way to guess north is to know which direction the sun should be in your part of the world at rough times of the day. The sun always rises in the east and sets in the west, but it doesn’t necessarily travel directly overhead to reach those two points. If you live away from the equator, and if it’s not mid-summer, then the sun will travel in a lower arc across the sky, towards the south (if you are in the northern hemisphere) or towards the north (if you are in the southern hemisphere). We live in the southern hemisphere, and we did our hike in winter, which means that for us, the sun travelled from the east, up into the northern part of the sky, to then set in the west. So, as it was mid afternoon, we could guess that the sun was facing approximately north west. (This will be the opposite for those of you on the other side of the world to us). I should also point out that it was an overcast day, but we could still guess the direction of the sun by looking where the clouds were brightest!

A compass is actually a magnet
There’s a small magnetic pin inside your compass which is suspended so it can spin freely and respond to the Earth’s magnetism.

All magnets have two poles – a north pole and a south pole. If you have two magnets, one magnet’s north pole will be attracted to another magnet’s south pole. Our planet is actually a huge magnet and has two poles too! (Although, confusingly, what we call the North Pole is actually the planet’s magnetic south pole – it’s called the North Pole and the direction is called North because other magnet’s north poles are attracted to it). And so, the mini magnet inside your compass will be attracted to the Earth’s magnetic south pole, and will spin until it faces ‘north’. {There’s more info on how compasses work here.}