Part of camping is the things to do. Nature provides most of the props for activities, and tradition fills in on occasion too. Here are some ideas:
1. Art Projects
Art and craft projects are a great in-camp activities. Adding glue, string, fabric scraps, yarn, and construction paper with leaves, twigs, stones, driftwood, and shells can allow children to be creative and make something out of the bits and pieces that they have collected.
Bring along a shoe box for each child to hold their artistic creation for the trip home, where it can be displayed on a shelf in their room (or anywhere else you choose) as a way of remembering the trip.
2. Beaches and Swimming
Beaches and water both provide a lot of entertainment for most children. It’s also a great place to spend a hot day. It does require waterproof sunscreen to prevent painful sunburns.
Beach toys can be anything from old plastic bowls to elaborate sand toys, as well as inflatables and beach balls. Use caution when swimming in areas without lifeguards, and always monitor children closely to ensure everyone stays safe.
3. Before & After
This can be a fun activity even for younger children and can become a great video record of your children’s lives. Set up your video camera or a web cam to record your child’s responses. Use the same or similar questions for each trip for the most revealing responses showing your child’s development.
This will become a treasured memory, so don’t forget to save it to a disk or external drive for viewing even years later.
4. Bird Watching
Get a guide, written for your region of the country, and have a contest to see who can identify the most birds over the course of the weekend. This is not an expensive activity—all it costs is the price of the single book, which will last for years.
For ease of keeping track, it may be a good idea to print out a checklist, listing the most common varieties of birds that can be anticipated, along with empty slots for less common birds. Spring and fall, during migrations, may allow for additional sightings over the normal birds that summer in your area.
An inexpensive pair of binoculars can be a great asset as everyone tries to identify birds that are not so close.
Bird watching is a very popular activity, with many people who are lifelong enthusiasts. It’s also very educational, especially if one studies the habits of the birds in question.
5. Card Games
On rainy days, hot afternoons, or anytime everyone is confined to camp, cards can be an excellent way to pass time and enjoy each other’s company. There are the traditional card games, but there are also games such as Uno that are often a great deal of fun. Younger children can enjoy games like Old Maid.
6. Dominoes
Dominoes are durable, not prone to blowing in the wind, and easy to learn to play games with. They also typically come in a case or can be put in a tin or canister for storage. For these reasons, they are a great game in lieu of cards to play while camping. Versions of dominoes that are geared for preschoolers are also available.
7. Foraging
If it is allowed, try foraging for plants, fruit, and seeds that are available in the area. Make sure you can positively identify the edible plants! Making mistakes can be fatal if a poisonous plant or fungus resembles the one you have collected. This is especially true of mushrooms!
If you can identify the plants accurately, try preparing and tasting them. Plants that were used in the past as food sources may have unfamiliar tastes and textures to the modern palate, and are interesting to learn about and compare to modern foods.
Blackberries make a sweet treat for foraging efforts.
Chinquapins are a relative of the chestnut but produce much smaller nuts. It is native to the South.
8. Horseshoes
A great in-camp activity for the family to indulge in that is inexpensive is the plastic horse shoes available to purchase for summer use. The entire family can play and leisurely enjoy a shared game in their camp site, a great activity while infants and toddlers are napping too.
9. Leaf Collection
Camping and trees are frequent companions. Identifying the trees is not only fun, but useful when one is searching for a particular type of tree for its wood or other items. Learning to identify leaves with the tree is a good skill and presents an opportunity for some fun.
Collect leaves and compare them with the leaves in a guide book to help identify which tree the leaves came from.
Tracing the leaves’ shapes onto a piece of paper can be done with a pencil rubbing. Simply place a sheet of paper on top of the leaf which has been placed on a hard flat surface.
The pencil is then laid almost parallel with the paper to put the graphite portion in contact on its side (not the point) and rubbed lightly over the surface to create a rubbing. These rubbings can be assembled into a binder or added to scrapbooks.
This activity goes well with plant identification.
10. Metal Detection
Not all parks allow metal detectors, but where it is allowed, it can be a fun experience for all. Beaches can often be a great location to use a metal detector, and on occasion, valuable items such as jewelry or coins may be found.
11. Photography
Fancy cameras aren’t necessary, and there are a number of inexpensive digital cameras available, including those designed for preschoolers. Challenge everyone to find the most interesting photos or to have a great story to tell with their photos. Digital scrapbooking is also an inexpensive activity that continues after everyone has returned home.
Make sure everyone has adequate memory or memory cards to last through the weekend. Bringing along a laptop or netbook to download the photographs to is also an option, if desired. Spare batteries and chargers should also be along, as well as protective cases that can attach to belts or fit into fanny packs to make them easy to take while protecting them from damage while hiking or on nature walks.
12. Plant Identification
Purchase a guide to plants in your region of the country. Using that, along with resources from the park where you are staying (exhibits, pamphlets, ranger’s assistance) see how many plants you can identify in the park or along a nature trail. Make a list of these plants and interesting facts about them. Identify the uses that these plants may have or have been used for in the past, as well as which plants are considered invasive foreigners.
Indian paintbrush is easy to identify because of its flowers.
13. Ranger & Park Activities
Check with the park office. Many parks offer ranger led activities on weekends, special occasions, or by request. On occasion, there may be an additional fee for these activities. They can be great fun, very educational, and enjoyed by the entire family.
In addition to ranger led activities, most parks offer nature trails, hiking trails, and sometimes even offer activity books for their “junior ranger” programs. These are also very educational as well as a lot of fun, and well worth asking about. Some parks also offer some kind of award or reward for all “junior rangers” that complete all of the activities. Most, if not all, of these are free or included in the fees paid for using the park and campground.
14. Rock Collecting
Rocks and children go hand in hand, and they typically love collecting them. Initially, it’s just “pretty” rocks or rocks that catch their imagination for some reason.
As time passes, if the interest remains, they will be more interested in seeking out specific types of rocks as avid fans of rock and mineral collecting. Indulging their early interest is fun, inexpensive, and entertaining. It’s also not expensive, assuming that collecting does not violate any laws or rules prohibiting it in the area you are in.
15. Scavenger Hunt
This activity has the parents busy before the kids even start, since they have to think up the items that the kids are going to hunt for. If you want to ensure they stay in camp, make sure the items on the list are found in camp.
This game works well with all age groups, as the difficulty can be varied according to the ages of the children involved.
16. Shell Collecting and Beach Combing
Beaches are a natural place to find shells, from common snail shells to more exotic varieties. Kids love collecting shells and driftwood, and it can be a great way to keep them out of the water and entertained. It’s a lot of fun to walk along the shoreline and see what they find—you may be surprised!
17. Storytelling
Storytelling is a great fireside activity, and it encourages creativity. While ghost stories may be “traditional”, no one wants to risk nightmares as a result of their fireside stories in the evening. As an alternative for the younger or more timid youth, try telling stories in the round.
To do this, one person starts telling the story, and the story is continued by each person in turn around the campfire. These stories can be as short as a single round through everyone, or as long as the entire evening.
18. Visit local places of interest
Many parks are located near other places of interest as well. These can include museums and historical sites. Research before you go to know what there is to see and do, and choose which ones are most interesting to your family. Leave your plans flexible, as sometimes you may discover other interesting places from the park office or other sources that you did not know were available.
History can be fun and interesting.
19. Campfire Sing-alongs
There are many songs to sing, drawn from American folk songs. Often, we forget the words, even when we remember the tunes. Here are some lyrics to help prompt your memory. If the lyrics you remember differ, don’t worry—most of these songs have numerous variations.
For those who like to accompany their campfire singing with guitar, music is typically available online or in most folk song books. While the guitar accompaniment is also part of tradition, not every family has a guitarist that is willing to bring along their guitar and play around the campfire.
More compact alternatives to the guitar are both the kazoo and the harmonica. Inexpensive versions of both are readily available and will let everyone get in on the action and try to learn to play them.
20. Ghost Stories
This is the type of stories traditionally people tell around the campfire, and the goal is to scare each other as much as possible with creepy and spooky tales. Some children find this exciting and fun, while others find that it leaves them feeling fearful. For children prone to nightmares, this is probably not a good fireside activity.
To be prepared for this impromptu scare-fest, reading the spooky stories in advance and remembering them well enough to retell them is important. Often, children who enjoy this type of story is very good at retelling it. For sources, your local library is a very good source, as there are numerous books containing spooky, scary, or creepy stories.