Outdoor Activities and Crafts for Kids While Camping

You spend days planning, shopping for food and gathering all the essentials required for camping. Then you drive and drive and set up camp and make dinner.
FINALLY… you can put your feet up and crack open your favorite beverage. Only to hear a child say the dreaded words, ”I’m bored!”

So you have one of two options.

1. Wait it out

I’ve done this one plenty of times. Recently I learned it takes 45 minutes for children to settle on something to play. So idle time is actually beneficial. Many of the activity ideas mentioned below were actually spontaneously created by my children or emerged from my own creativity when I had some down time. But if you need to get dinner started and don’t want to wait it out, we’ve collected a sample of nature inspired activities to give you a little help.

2. Provide Activity Suggestions

Sometimes all you need is a little inspiration and a few simple items. I’ve broken it down to no-prop, and minimal prop activities. If you’re already camping check out the first list. If you’re prepping for a camping trip, make sure to check out the second list and grab some items while shopping for supplies and groceries. Hope these simple nature inspired activities help foster creativity as imaginations begin to soar.

Craft Bin: My first suggestion though is to be prepared by creating camping craft bin. I try my best to keep one fully stocked with the essentials for creativity. Some examples include duct tape, scissors, twine, beads, paint and paintbrushes. This way you are prepared ahead of time.

Nature Inspired Activities

NO PROP ACTIVITIES

These activities or crafts require only items found in nature.

Nature Mandalas

Mandala simply means "circle" in Sanskrit. These circular geometric designs represent the universe and often are an aid in meditation. A nature mandala is basically a type of design, figure, or pattern using materials in nature. We challenged ourselves this year to make a mandala in every season; summer, fall, winter and spring. Personally, we have found they are relaxing to make and so pretty to look at. Before you start to create your pattern, make sure to collect a lot of each unique material such as rocks, berries, flower petals, pine needles, seashells. We have made nature mandalas in a number of different seasons. Need more inspiration, check out these pictures and tips for creating your own mandalas and joining the nature mandala challenge.

Target Spear Throwing

Sharpening sticks into spears is a favorite pastime for my children. We often find them scrapping their sticks against the sidewalk until they have achieved a pointed edge. With supervision my children also love to use a pocket knife to sharpen their sticks. We monitor children closely when using a knife, depending on their age and your trust level.

During a rainy, wet camping trip we created a target on the muddy ground. Armed with our pointy spears a game naturally developed, which we dubbed “spearing”. We found the best method to throw the sticks was a simple flick of the wrist downward.

State Leaf Map

Creating a State Leaf Maps especially in fall is a perfect activity, but could be done in any season. First collect a wide variety of leaves. Then create an outline shape of your specific state in the dirt with a stick or trace on the sidewalk with chalk. Allow children to fill in the map with leaves until the entire outline is covered. Bonus, place a rock on your home town city. This is a wonderful activity to educate children in greater depth about their state and to help them recognize where they live.

Nature Tic Tac Toe

Collect sticks and nine rocks (preferably flatter shaped rocks). Next paint or draw X’s or 0’s on each of the rocks. A variation is to spend some time painting different nature objects, for example sun/moon, leaf/berry, or ladybugs/bumblebees. Use the sticks to make a tic tac toe grid and then play away.

Stick Mazes

This simple activity only requires sticks and a smooth compact dirt or grassy area. Spend time collecting tons of sticks of various lengths. Once you’ve gathered your supply, begin laying them out to make a maze. Starting with the outer edge of the maze often works the best and then fill in the center. Make sure to include a start and finish. Then allow each person a turn completing the maze.

Leaf Buntings

This activity will keep kids busy while you decorate your campsite. Simply collect a variety of leaves and poke a hole through each leaf using a pointed stick. Then string twine through each leaf, one by one. Display your nature creation by hanging your completed leaf buntings between trees, over your tent, or around your camper.

Animal Shapes

A simple activity for younger children is to draw an outline of a animal, shape or object and allow them to use creativity to fill in with petals. This particular time we were inspired by our favorite Eric Carle book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Fort Building

Fort building

When we reserve campsites, we often try to stay to the outer loops of campgrounds so that they back up to woods. This allows our children the opportunity to build forts and let their imaginations run wild. Give your kids a little challenge, tell them to make a teepee or give them beach towels. Go on a hike and collect large branches and leaves to add to their forts. If you have a larger group of kids you can even make it a fun competition.

Minimal Prop Activities

These activities require some pre-planning. Listed next to the activity is the materials you will need. Most of these ideas need just a few basic materials. Recently I created a camping craft bin that stays fully stocked with our craft supplies so we’re prepared every time we go camping.

Snack Necklaces

Snack Necklaces

Materials Needed: Circle shaped candy/snacks, string, needle

A dual purpose activity. These snack necklaces serve as a fun activity for children and a snack to enjoy later while hiking. Make sure and make one for yourself. They’re the best!

The trick is when you shop for your camping trip, pick up items that can be strung easily, plus a needle and thread. Here is the full tutorial to make Hiking Snack Necklaces with ideas of what snacks work best.

Boats

Materials Needed: cardboard, wood, sticks, tin foil, paper.

If you’re camping anywhere near a creek or body of water, then creating your own boats out of sticks, bark, and leaves can be a creative activity to pass the time. Twigs bound together with twine, outer nut casings, bark or even tin foil can all be used as the based. Leaves, sticks or paper can be used to make a sail. Let your children experiment with what works best and be as creative as possible. Then test them out on the water.

Decorate Walking Sticks

Materials Needed: sand paper/ sander, feathers, duck tape, beads, twine etc.

Create your own personalized hiking sticks to bring with you on your next adventures. Part of the fun is locating the perfect stick, ideally about shoulder high. Then sand it down and decorate it with feathers, duct tape, beads, etc. This is one of those crafts that is both practical and fun! This does require planning ahead to gather materials, here are all the details to make personalized hiking sticks.

Water Color Nature Art

Materials needed: Nature Materials , water color paints, paintbrush & paper.

Once again allow your children to collect nature materials including acorns, bark, grasses, weeds, moss, pine needles, feathers etc. We all know paint can be quite messy, so that’s why I love to do it outside. My children already wear old clothes while camping, so I just let them have at it.

Rock Painting

Materials Needed : Acyrlic Paint, Paintbrush, Rocks

This activity is pretty much self explanatory. One tip, grab smooth, flatter rocks to make painting easier. Then let your imaginations soar. We love painting nature inspired items such as ladybugs, bees, leaves, sunshine, butterflies, animals, tents, campfires, and smiley faces etc. If your children are really young a super simple, but fun way is to make silly monster faces. Acrylic paint works the best for the outdoors. You can even get a sharpie or paint pen and add encouraging sayings to the rocks. There really is no limit.

Add another element of fun by searching for hidden spots around the campground and hiding them for others to find later.

While camping we also play a lot of games. Here are are some of our favorite card games, board games and yard games to play together while camping. Most of them are compact sized games with sturdy storage containers, perfect for camping.

We hope these activities have inspired you to get outside and enjoy nature. It is amazing what creative endeavors we can discover when we spend time exploring and playing outside. Follow and subscribe to Discovering Anew for more activity ideas and camping reviews.