Fun Camping Games For Kids: Try These Ideas On Your Next Trip!

The key to an enjoyable summer is playing various fun games. These keep your kids entertained and enthusiastic during your vacation. That’s why having a few games available for everyone is essential.

Our main goal is to teach you a few camping games you and your kids can play on your next trip. Each game is easy to learn and becomes fun within minutes. Try a few of these games to make your camping event fun.

1. Mosquito Bites

This game is simple to play and is a great icebreaker. When the campout begins, distribute red circular stickers and give them as a gift to each camper. Choose and find a word kids tend to say frequently. Words such as “camping” and “tent” are great examples. Make that common word prohibited and challenge the kids not to say it for at least an hour.

If a player says the forbidden phrase while they go through their activities, they give the kid a mosquito bite (a piece of the red sticker). By the end of the game, the kid with the most mosquito bites loses and must dispose of the other player’s mosquito bites.

2. Backpack Pass

Start by placing some chocolate square marshmallows into small bags. Write a simple command outside the bag, such as “Shout 3 times.” Then, you’ll want to place the bag into another bag, where another command is written.

Keep placing the bag inside the other bags (placed with commands) until you have a command for everyone.

Put them inside the backpack. Place some marshmallows and graham crackers into the backpacks, but remind the campers that they can only receive the candy once they have completed the backpack game. Let the campers sit at a campfire and pass the backpack around once the music starts to play. Once the music stops, the players open the bag and perform the first task.

Keep playing in that manner until everyone in the room has completed the command. The game ends when a chocolate bag appears.

3. Magnet Fishing

Remove the fish shapes and separate them with three different colors. Have three of the baskets filled with different trinket prizes, and mark the baskets with ribbons that correspond to the fish’s colors. Place paper clips into each paper fish and set them in a planter box or a baby pool.

Tie strings to the sticks to create fishing rods, then attach the magnets at the bottom of the strings. When a camper finds a fish, they choose a prize from the basket with the corresponding ribbon color.

4. Canteen Brigade

Create two teams out of your camping group. Set two buckets filled with water on one side and two empty buckets on the other side, separating the empty ones from the filled ones by at least 12 feet.

Place the two teams in front of the filled buckets and give each of them a canteen. The objective of the game is to fill the other side with water. Team members race against the opposing team, using the canteen to distribute water from the full buckets to the empty ones.

5. Bear Catcher

This game is an alternative version of freeze tag. One player is the bear catcher, while the other players are bears. Set one camping bag for each bear all around the campsite. Have each bear sit in their cave (on top of the sleeping bag), and have the bear catcher stand in the center.

When the referee shouts, “Go!” the bear has to go to a new cave before the bear catcher tags them. When a bear is tagged, they become the new bear catcher.

Knot Tying

This is a simple game that teaches the campers how to tie knots. Have an instructor teach the campers how to make three different camping knots. By the end of the instruction, place a timer and challenge the campers to complete the three knots before the buzzer sounds.

What Are the Best Educational Camping Activities for Kids?

Are you planning a summer camping trip with your family and want to keep your kids busy? Who doesn’t? And we are not just talking about playing games—we are talking about complete educational camping activities for kids! 

In this article, we have prepared games, pass times, activities, and apps that you can use to make your camping trip more memorable and educational. Whether you’re bringing teens or toddlers, we have something for everyone.

Create your Own Educational Camping Experience

Camping is a learning experience. However, we can always make it more educational. That’s why we prepared this list of educational camping activities for kids! There are so many soft skills that individuals learn and develop while on a camping trip. Many of these revolve around mindfulness. Truly living in the moment and becoming attuned to your needs brings about a sense of independence, self-confidence, and responsibility.

Additionally, camping will teach you new information and train you in many hard skills. It is often these intellectual abilities that people associate with being educational. To make the most of your next camping experience, look at the following activities and plan accordingly!

Educational Camping Activities for Kids on Your Next Camping Trip

Camping can offer many educational experiences for kids. You can easily play these games while at camp, and you’ll surely enjoy and learn.

1. Play Nature Bingo at Your Campsite

It’s a family game night camping edition, and we have the best educational camping activities for kids! Play Nature Bingo at your campsite or while on a hike. This is a fun way to explore your space with a purpose.

Use a premade bingo board to learn about your space. Print one for each family member and decide what makes “Bingo”! Will it be your standard 5 in a row (horizontal, diagonal, or vertical) or something more creative? Help reinforce letters of the alphabet by making an “X,” “H,” or letter “L” be “Bingo!”.

Have your family search for the natural items pictured to create their Bingo. Get photographs involved if you’re trying to make it artsy or more intense. You can also do multiple rounds of Bingo by asking your family members to create a new shape each time. As always, prizes might inspire even the least enthusiastic about participating and learning about their surroundings.

2. Check Out Local Attractions

What extraordinary adventures can you find in town? There might be some awesome spots for you and your family to check out.

Look for guided tours, museums, and adventurous activities. These all provide opportunities for learning, fun, and family memories. You’re bound to find a local attraction that meets the interests of your party‘s guests. Whether your family seeks a guided cave tour, a museum focusing on a specific topic, or a white water rafting adventure, you’ll all have the best time.

If you know where to look, you never know what you might learn about the area! A park’s visitor center can be full of history, science, and recreation knowledge. Additionally, many parts of the country have education centers designed for young children! These offer hands-on experiences and education specialist rangers to enhance your educational camping experience.

4. Play Trivia

Search for or create trivia specific to where you’re traveling! This is a great way to learn about the place you’re visiting in a fun and exciting way. Up the ante by bringing a prize or creating an incentive for the trivia winner.

One great way to plan for this activity is to play trivia on the drive. This is a great way to keep the kids occupied while on the road. It’ll likely teach them something new about your camping location and possibly even help them grow an appreciation for the spot.

You can also plan for a trivia night towards the end of your stay. This would allow you to create questions as you explore and learn new things about your camping location. It’s a good way to wrap up a trip and see what the family remembers about where you’ve been.

The final and possibly most engaging way to play travel trivia is to set up the game ahead of time for your family to play throughout your travels. This will keep all family members on the edge of their seats at every attraction. They’ll be hanging on to every word they hear in an attempt to snag a trivia answer! No matter how you play trivia, your family is bound to enjoy their time while learning something new.

5. Learn Wilderness Survival Skills

Is it even a camping trip if you don’t learn and/or practice your wilderness survival skills? These are great skills for people of all ages to develop. These skills help you feel more independent and could one day save your life.

Wilderness survival skills include learning how to:

• navigate with a compass
• creating drinkable water,
• building and maintaining a fire,
• basic first aid, and more.

These skills are easy to incorporate into any camping trip, can help build confidence and self-esteem, and allow individuals to reconnect with nature safely. 

6. Take Part in Campground-Hosted Camping Activities for Kids

Many campgrounds host wonderful activities for kids, teens, and families. These activities can be incredibly informative and an excellent opportunity to socialize and make new friends. 

Many campgrounds have scheduled events throughout the day. Some might be as simple as a bag toss tournament, and others might be more in-depth. Often, campgrounds offer nighttime programs where campers can learn a skill, such as fire building or making s’mores.

Many campfire programs also include storytime. The rangers or caretakers might share some information on the local wildlife or share the area’s history. Either way, it’s an excellent opportunity to learn something new and meet new people!

7. Bird and Wildlife Watching

This is one of our favorite camping activities for kids, but it can be tricky. They tend to be too loud for birds and wildlife to stay put! Luckily, there are certain places where viewing wildlife is just as easy as scaring it away.

Identifying wildlife and talking about its habitat is always fun. There are many ways to take this conversation to the next level and add educational value. You can head in the direction of habitat loss and destruction and what we, as humans, can do to protect wildlife.

• Additionally, you can look at wildlife and talk about the food chain or food webs for the more advanced. Is this animal a primary or secondary consumer?
• What does it eat?
• What might eat it?

Following the energy flow in its most natural state and realizing each creature’s importance in the ecosystem can be fun.

8. Nature Scavenger Hunt

Let’s go on a Nature Scavenger Hunt! One of the most popular camping activities for kids can be its separate entity, or you can work it into a family hike. It’s essential to follow the leave no trace ethics and leave everything in nature as we’ve found it. You shouldn’t bring back anything you’ve found on your scavenger hunt to camp with you.

The list can be simple, depending on your child’s age and ability. This is a great way to reinforce reading skills, whether it’s a photo for the pre-readers, a knot example, or sight words for the new readers. An essential list might include words such as:

For our older, more advanced readers, we can be more specific. Using words such as:

You can turn the scavenger hunt into a photo hunt for even older children and adult family members. Ask your family members to take pictures of frogs, birds, specific species of trees, and so on. This might be more fun and allow a creative twist! You never know what fantastic photographer you might find in the group while you’re at it.

9. Stargazing

There isn’t anything quite like the night sky. Stargazing is a beautiful way to wind down and fall asleep, but there’s much to learn when looking up into space.

Space is vast, and staring into the night sky can be equally peaceful and overwhelming. It provides a tremendous opportunity to talk about stars, satellites, and the unknowns of space. Free apps such as Sky Map (Android) and Star Walk (iPhone) can help you and your family learn the names of stars, constellations, and planets when you point your phone at the sky.

Aside from learning cool things about the night sky, you can also play fun bedtime games. Counting satellites or shooting stars is always exciting and keeps our eyes scanning the beautiful night sky until we fall into a peaceful sleep.

10. Natural Art Projects

There are many different approaches one can take to Natural Art Projects. You must always respect the space that you’re in by leaving no trace. This ultimately means you should leave everything as you find it. However, if you’re going to do some arts and crafts, make sure everything is ‘dead’ and ‘down’. This means only using leaves, flowers, twigs, etc., that have fallen from their home and are currently on the ground.

11. Scrapbook Your Camping Memories

Have the little ones paste nature items (this can be a good activity to combine with scavenger hunting) into a book. Have your child bring the same scrapbook with them on every camping trip! Ask them to write about the object, where they’re camping, what happened that day, and anything else they might feel keen to add.

Scrapbooking combines a few crafts. It provides a little bit of nature education and combines it with a little bit of journaling. If your little one struggles with the writing portion, give them a writing prompt to start their sentence. It’s an excellent way for young campers to build memories of their trips while reinforcing many academic skills. 

These writing prompts could be:

• Write about the most exciting thing you did today.
• Write about the last sunset you saw.
• Write a short story about the prettiest color you saw today.

12. Make Art From Camp Objects

Transform the natural world into crafting supplies by asking kids to gather appropriate natural objects and make something. These things can be 3D, like a sculpture, or 2D, like a picture or painting. Create a house, turtle, or car out of your findings. Let them use leaves, rocks, twigs, and whatever else they find to make something new. When they’re done, ask them to scatter these items back where they found them to follow the leave no trace principles.

13. Create Rubbings

Rubbings are a fantastic and easy way to “capture” nature as found while camping. Rubbings can also be incorporated into scavenger hunts and scrapbooking.

To complete a rubbing, lay a natural item, such as a leaf, flat on a hard surface and place a piece of paper over it. Once you have that setup, you can rub the flat side of a pencil or crayon over the paper to reveal the item’s details below.

Rubbings can easily capture the shape and texture of an item and are a beautiful way to document nature without actually taking it. They also provide the opportunity to continue the artistic process. For example, a crayon rubbing is water-resistant so you can paint the image with watercolors. Get creative and have fun with this art project!

Conclusion

There are many ways to keep your campers interested. Each of these games is designed to keep your campers interested and entertained. Try using a mixture of these games during your next camping event for better results!

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