Guest Author - Evanne Schmarder

Buds are bursting, temperatures are warming and families are making plans for the best-ever camping/RVing trips. Whether it’s a trip to a new “favorite” place or an old standby, family camping trips are what life’s memories are made of. Spend time together with these nifty family camping activities…

Take a hike – Exploring the big beautiful outdoors with your children can be an adventure and an education.

• Prepare a hiking kit for each kid including a magnifying glass, note book and fun writing utensils, a bug, flora and/or fauna identifier or anything else that may help pique their interest.
• Wrap wide masking tape, sticky side out, around everyone’s wrist as a bracelet for collecting flowers, leaves, etc. along the trail.
• Devise a scavenger hunt. Provide each kid a list of several items that are likely to be found on a nature hike, for example, a small brown rock, a leaf at least one inch long, a pine cone, a yellow flower, etc., a pencil, and a large ziploc bag. At the end of the hike check off the items found and give a small treat or prize to all participants.

Build a bird feeder and marvel at your new visitors. You’ll need a large pine cone, peanut butter, bird seed, a long string, a plastic knife or popsicle stick, and a paper plate. Tie a loop with the string around the “stem” of the pine cone making it long enough to hang from a nearby tree branch. Using the plastic knife or stick, coat the pine cone with peanut butter, pour bird seed on the paper plate and roll the coated pine cone in the bird seed. Well done! Hang your bird feeder in a quiet place and enjoy the show!

Bring home a new “pet” – a pet rock that is. This is an easy craft that will continue to deliver memories long after the trip is complete. From home you’ll need a supply of colorful permanent markers, small wiggly eyes, and glue (or small glue dots no larger than the eyes). Find a medium-sized, smooth rock, clean it up and based on its shape, imagine what type of animal it is (think lady bug, frog, beaver, etc.). Using the markers, color/decorate the rock and then glue eyes on “him” or “her”.

And lastly, we can’t leave out that old standby…find a grassy meadow, sandy beach or other comfortable surface, lay down side-by-side and gaze up at the clouds, imagining all the unusual or day-to-day things their forms represent.

Ahhh, it doesn’t get any better than this!