What are your fun family activites while camping?

Rock painting! Get some cheap acrylic paint pots from Walmart, glue, glitter, sequins, buggy eyes, etc. And some spray-on gloss sealer.

Have the kids pick out a rock and decorate it (put newspaper down on the picnic table. Let rocks dry and decorate with whatever they wish. Let dry again and spray on gloss sealer. Voila!! You have a souvenir!

We have lots of painted rocks sitting around our house as doorstops, paperweights, decorations, etc.!

My kids now 7 & 11 have always loved a campfire, walking and playing in the woods, swimming, finding bugs, squirrels, playing in the dirt, hiking, biking etc.

Looking frogs with child for long time; playing charades around the campfire and a long walk with whole family, and clicking through our cameras all the time etc. are all the favorite activities of us.

Our gkids are 5 and 7. They love Playdoh on the outside picnic table. We do it outside so we don't get it on the RV floor. I bought them "headlights", the headbands that have a light on the front, and they love to walk after dark with those on.

Of course it depends where you go and who goes with you. Our kids like to swim or go down waterslides. We also take along little ceramics and paints you can buy at Wal*Mart. Glowsticks and Jiffy Pop (with extention) to pop over the fire. Bikes or golf cart rentals to look around at other's sites to get ideas. Bubbles and ballons and big chalk.

Our Grandkids have camped with us since they were babies and we find things each trip that they love. Hikes are always great, and they always take an empty trash bag to pick up trash that others have left (their idea, not ours) They love the naturalists talks that Mo State Parks have, and have earned Explorer Patches each year. This Fall we are going to ask persmission to collect leaves, and I will show them how to press them with Wax paper like I did in elementary school, and then we can identify each tree species...will be enough fun they won't even know they are learning...lol...Hopefully when they are middle aged, they will tell their kids/grandkids about the fun they had while camping with Gramps and Gram

The Car Doctor wrote:
Fishing and geocaching are a couple of our favorites.

We are going to try our first geocaching this weekend.

every campfire has to have at least one round of "20 questions" and "i spy with my little eye". Both the 5 and 10 year old have been playing 20Q's for so long they're experts. The 5 yr old in particular comes up with some great "person/place/things" herself, and machine guns out "guesses" so fast and random she's usually the one to solve ... especially when it's a yes to "is it in this campsite". We have a traxxas battery remote control truck thsi is always a big hit, especially at night with the lights we rigged up. We kayak, and try to find a small cove on any lake we hit so we can have our own private beach. Also have a traxxas battery boat that we'll run along with the kayaks, lotsa fun there. And fish, both kids love to fish. We're usually so busy swimming/kayaking/exploring during the day, night fishing has become a pretty good tradition. Then ... the campfire, games and story telling. We also usually get in one game of "sticks and stones tic tac toe". Scratch a # in the dirt, or on paper if we're hiding in the tent thru a thunderstorm. Sticks and stones instead of X and O ... and there ya go.

Fishing and geocaching are a couple of our favorites. Also, a couple of my kids just got some inexpensive digital cameras and spend hours and hours taking pictures and videos.

Half dozen cheap Frizbee's (technically flying discs)with numbers or initials. Disc Golf!

Player picks a tree, table, etc. as the first "hole". Everyone throws and you have a golf game! We make up rules like "you have to go between those trees and around the fire pit to land on the table".

Take turns deciding which is the next hole.