Picture this scenario: You have just booked your camping trip with kids, and you are planning for a weekend or weeklong trip. You don’t want your kids to be bored, but you also don’t want them just sitting around on their tablets and gaming devices the entire trip.
Well, we have 10 kid-friendly activities for your next camping trip that might be a little different from just sitting around the fire and will keep them from getting bored!
Let’s dive right into them.
- Nature Scavenger Hunt
Create a list of items for kids to find in nature, such as pinecones, feathers, or specific types of leaves and turn it into a scavenger hunt. You can even reward them with prizes like extra marshmallows on their s’mores!
We have done this at multiple campgrounds around the country because it helps us educate our children about local culture and ecosystems. For example, if we are in Arizona, we may add a certain type of cactus to the scavenger hunt, versus if we are in Maine, where we may add a certain type of maple tree!
- Campfire Cooking
We have done the normal things at campfires, like s’mores and even hot dogs on cooking sticks, but it’s always fun to do different things.
We love doing this to let our girls be creative with what they want to have for snacks. We create “Campfire Bananas” where we slice open a banana and add whatever toppings we want (marshmallows, sprinkles, chocolate syrup, etc.) and then wrap them in foil and cook them over the campfire. After about 5 minutes or so, you take the packet off the fire and open up the foil and banana and you have a wonderful treat that’s different from your typical campfire s’mores!
- Rock Painting
Arts and crafts are always fun, and so is finding and hiding rocks! We love to find rocks in a campground that may be unique to that area and then let our girls paint the rocks to hide for others to find. We encourage them to use their imagination and think about local culture and what is significant to that area.
Painting the rocks keeps them busy and occupied, and then hiding them is a whole other adventure!
We usually put our social media channels on the rock so people can tag us and we can see where the rocks end up!
- Hiking Nearby Trails
Explore nearby trails and enjoy the sights and sounds of the outdoors.
This is by far one of our favorite things to do. No matter where we camp, whether it’s close to home or across the country, we love to get out and hike a nature trail or scenic view trail. Our girls love getting out into nature and looking for animals and plants.
Oddly, our girls love looking for animal droppings and animal tracks to try and identify what may have been in the area!
We utilize the AllTrails app to help us find great trails, looking at reviews and pictures. Being able to see images of the trails helps us decide if it’s something that we can hike with our girls.
- Stargazing
Lie out under the stars and identify constellations with a stargazing app or guidebook.
One thing we love to do all across the country is sit outside at night and enjoy the nighttime sky. Whether we are on the East Coast in Florida or Pennsylvania or we are across the country in Sedona, Arizona, we can always look up at the night sky and see the stars from a different perspective.
We always try to find the Big and Little Dippers no matter where we are in the country.
- Nature Journaling
Encouraging kids to document their camping experience by sketching plants and animals they encounter or writing about their adventures can not only keep them engaged during a trip but also create long-lasting memories.
When we first started our full-time journey back in 2021, we purchased a kids travel journal for our oldest daughter. We also gave our younger daughter a sketch pad for her to draw things from the areas we visited. We thought this would be a great way for them to look back on their memories and everywhere we have been.
- Plant identification
Taking a nature walk and learning to identify different plants and trees using a field guide for kids or an app is a great way to keep kids involved during hiking or walking.
This is something that our girls LOVE to do. They are nature kids, so they absolutely love going out to different areas and learning all about the different wildlife and plant life that exists. We use an app called SEEK to help identify plants and animals.
We always try to utilize adventures like this for a learning opportunity about local places we are visiting.
- DIY Nature Crafts
Use materials found in nature to create crafts like leaf rubbings, pinecone bird feeders, or twig picture frames.
Whether you are camping in the woods, desert, or at the beach, there are always wonderful nature finds that kids can use to make fun crafts. We have found small twigs on a forest nature hike and glued them together to make a picture frame for a photo our oldest daughter took with her camera!
We have also used pinecones to decorate and then tied them with strings to hang at our campsite. They don’t last a long time, so they are perfect for your week of camping and then you can discard them before returning home.
- Geocaching
Use a GPS device or smartphone app to hunt for hidden treasures in the area.
We are still new to geocaching and have only done it a few times, but the times that we have, it has been exciting! If you are not familiar with what geocaching is, you basically use a GPS or your phone to hunt for hidden treasures, known as geocaches.
There are apps and websites you can join that list coordinates for hidden items, and then you set the coordinates and head out looking for them.
We try to stick to kid-friendly ones that may have just a guestbook for you to sign, but some we have done are “take something, leave something.”
For example, we found one that had a plastic mood ring in it, and we left a friendship bracelet.
This can be a fun and exciting way to get your kids out hiking if they think hiking is boring!
- Outdoor Movie Night
Set up a portable projector and screen or hang a white sheet between trees to enjoy a family movie night under the stars.
This is definitely one of our kids’ favorite activities while camping. As full-time RV kids, our girls have learned to quickly and easily become friends with other kids at campgrounds (you do not need to be a full-time RVer for this, either). So, we like to put out a movie projector and screen and invite other families over for a kids movie night while the parents sit around a fire and socialize.
It’s a great way for your kids to make new friends and also for you to become friends with your fellow campers.
These are 10 of our top kid-friendly activities to do on your next camping trip that may be a little different from what you typically do when camping.
We would love to hear from you on what your favorite activities are to do during camping.
Let’s continue the conversation by giving us a follow on Instagram! If that’s not your thing, you can find us on all platforms:
Newsletter (we provide free guides to everywhere we have visited across the country)
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Hey, guys! We are Chris and Amanda, and along with our 2 daughters, we are Type1Detour. We have been traveling full-time in our fifth-wheel since 2021 and document our journey to encourage others to Create Your Own Detour! Chris and our oldest daughter both live with Type 1 diabetes, and we have not let that stop us from traveling the country full-time. We want you to get out and live the life you love and don’t let any setbacks stop you from doing it! We would love for you to follow our journey on any of our social channels. We are @Type1Detour on all platforms. |
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