Camping is without a doubt one of the most fun ways for a family to bond and spend their time enjoying the great outdoors together. For the most part, children love the outdoors and camping, but let’s be honest, children get bored extremely easy and need constant new and exciting activities and things to do when out camping with the family. That is where this article comes in. This article will contain 5 fantastic, fun and engaging activities to do with your children to stop them from being bored while camping.
1. Make Some Creative Snacks Together
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Camping just isn’t camping without some great snacks, and what child doesn’t love snacks? If children are getting restless and bored, there are few things that will excite them and put a pep in their step like some snacks. In order to up the fun a little more, involve the children in coming up with the idea for the treat and the creation of said treat as well. Of course, there are the typical snacks such as roasting marshmallows for s’mores and cooking hot dogs over the open fire, but there a ton of other options for great snacks to make and enjoy with your kids and coming up with them is half the fun! One example of such a treat is to make custom trail mix with some of the individual snacks that you have such as M&Ms, granola, nuts and other delicious ingredients.
2. Create Some Arts and Crafts
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If children aren’t cooperating during the trip or are exhausted after a long day of excitement and are growing restless and irritated, there is nothing better than sitting down as a family and making some arts and crafts. For one, it is a good way to interact and spend time with your children and work together towards a common goal of creating something beautiful, and it is also serves as a great way to teach your children to be able to build and create things. There are a ton of different crafts and art that you could have fun with, one of our favorites is to challenge the child to create a picture or craft made entirely out of things that can be found around the camp site such as leaves, pinecones, rocks and other items.
3. Scavenger Hunt
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Scavenger hunts are a great way to allow the children to explore the camp site and surrounding areas in a way they wouldn’t likely do if they were doing something else or just passing by. However, before making your list of items and sending your child off to find them, you should set up some ground rules such as the limits of the search and how long before they return. The items you choose for the list will depend a great deal on the landscape and surroundings of where you are camping, but could be things such as feathers, rocks, leaves and such.
4. Geocaching
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This is a relatively new outdoor activity that was actually first played in the year 2000, but has quickly picked up steam and is now played all around the world and would make for a perfect adventure game with your children while camping with them. Geocaching is a game in which participants use a GPS device or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches”. A typical cache is a small container containing a small book with a pen/pencil. The searcher enters the date they found it and signs it. After signing the log, the cache must be placed back exactly where the person found it, so that some other adventurer may find it. These caches can also contain items for trading, normally small and cheap trinkets and toys.
5. Go Exploring
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What better way to keep children on their toes and engaged while camping than to take them on an adventure. There is perhaps nothing more that children like to do than to explore their surroundings and see things they don’t normally get to see. Not only does going on an adventure with your children allow you some quality time bonding with your children, it also allows them to experience new stimuli and learn new facts about nature. Children love to ask questions, so chances are they will have a lot if you are exploring an area they aren’t accustomed to seeing such as mountains or rivers.
