My wife and I decided to take our daughters aged 5 and 7 for their first tent camping trip. We wanted to expose them to the experience of sleeping in a tent. We were excited about the prospect of the kids spending 4 days outdoors in the nature and having a break from the screen.
Once we arrived, I got engaged with setting the tent and a campfire. Our camping gear included some new items like the tent and air mattresses we never used before, so the setup was exciting. In the meantime, my wife and kids explored the amenities of the camp. We were at the
KOA located at New Bern, NC. There was a pool, fishing dock, kayaks rentals, fossil workshop, couple of fishing ponds. It seemed like a great place to spend couple of days that offered a lot of activities.
Everything was going as planned until mid-first day …. My older daughter approached me and shared that she was bored…. How could she be bored out there in this beautiful place?!?! Initially I could not grasp why would she say that but being proactive, I started discussing with her a plan of our activities for that day.
I was thinking about that later. It seemed that with each day the kids engaged more and more with the new surroundings and kept busy with new activities. I think that when you pull them out from the environment of their home where they have their usual activities and toys, they need some time to adjust and start making themselves busy in new ways.
Here are some of the tips from our trip:
- For the first trip do not go far as you may need to bail out and go back home in case of extreme weather or kids insisting on going back home. For the same reasons do not book long trips – our kids were ready to go home after 3 nights in the tent.
- Bring with you some of kid’s favorite toys and books and offer those to them especially on the first day.
- Keep checking the activities organized by the campground – at the one we stayed I was getting number of text messages about family activities during each day. Attend those activities because kids will not be satisfied by just seating next to the tent and enjoying the serenity of surroundings like we adults – they need engaging activities with some breaks between them.
- Do not unload everything to the tent – keep as much as possible in your car. During our last night, we have faced furious thunderstorm and I was ready to evacuate from the campground if our tent collapsed under the strong winds and heavy rain. The less you keep in your tent the easier evacuation will be.
- If you want your kids to continue enjoying your camping trips, make them memorable – find some activities that the kids would do first time and remember. My daughter caught her first fish during our trip and when I asked her, what she liked about camping … her answer was: “fishing with Daddy!”
- Keep your eyes on you small kids all the time. A campground may be a busy place with a lot of tents and campers and people. Your kids may be easily confused and lost and have hard time finding the way back to your tent.
