What are your fun family activites while camping?
I thought I would ask this question two fold… What are your family camping traditions? And what activities do you find yourself doing the most with younger children?
Forum Discussion
- Exploring nature... looking for animals, signs of animals, identifying plants & trees, geology(rock formations, sediment layers, rock collecting) and more. A good source for information is to pick up a Boy Scout Handbook (the older the better). The handbook has lots of suggestions for fun things to do while camping.
Here's a website with a complete Boy Scout Handbook you can read from 1911 It's fun to look through it and there is a lot of great information in it.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29558/29558-h/29558-h.htm
A night we would play card games or scrabble, yatzee, uno, bingo..etc.
Tell spooky stories around the campfire.
Star gazing
Throwing rocks at cans or skipping stones on a lake or river.
Bubbles are always fun for the kids the bear II wrote:
Throwing rocks at cans
This is exaclty why I asked the question... Very simple idea yet, that is something we have never done! We will give it a try to see how it goes over!- My kids are young (7 and 2). They love looking for frogs, playing at the playgrounds (a necessity for us) and generally puddling around outside. Every evening we camp, we go for a walk around the cg just after supper. The kids get a big kick out of seeing the other rigs and waving.
- We took our grandkids out recently. Kids bingo was a hit. Also have a board game called "camp"' it was lots of fun to play with them. Also I went to Walmart and bought a kids plastic bow and arrow set. At the campsite, I stacked plastic cups on the campsite grill and they took turns trying to hit the target! It was great. Also popular with them is a scavenger hunt where they look for objects in woods like leaves shaped like a heart, acorns, pinecones, etc. Gives them different things to do.
- My kids used to love to play charades around the campfire. And throw rocks at trees, the further away the better. DD made a nice little scrapbook of leaves from different trees once. Another time I showed the kids how to make chains from clover--that entertained them half the afternoon. And how to whistle with a blade of grass. A couple times I even took a baby pool for our youngest DS. The older kids were able to access the lake, but DS couldn't walk well enough to get there(he is very mentally handicapped.) So we asked permission and then set up the pool with about 6 inches of water on our site. We sat him in there and gave him several cups and bowls, and he was happy as a clam.
- The 4yo granddaugter love to look at nature(trees,leaves,bugs,rocks) so we take nature hikes and collect things. She also loves dirt,but then again what kid does't? She will sit for hours with a spoon and a cup or bowl and fill them with dirt and dump them out. Playgrounds or a beach is always a good time. We try to have a small assortment of her "favorite" toys from home so she has something familar to play with. Camping traditions are blueberry pancakes on Saturday morning,pizza pie irons and/or s'mores around the campfire and family walks around the campground. The thing is that we don't really "plan" our activities they just happen,or not,that is OK too.
dcb17b wrote:
Love this!!! We met this sweet little older couple in Mueller State Park this summer, who said they have always made s'mores with granny smith apples instead of crackers. Going to try it this labor day weekend. And if by chance they are reading this, we got our water pump fixed... Thanks for being so sweet!
Camping traditions are blueberry pancakes on Saturday morning,pizza pie irons and/or s'mores around the campfire and family walks around the campground.Chock Full o' Nuts wrote:
We like charades too. I am going to see if we can figure out how to make chains from clover!
My kids used to love to play charades around the campfire. Another time I showed the kids how to make chains from clover- 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.
