Camping with Small Children

This is a guest post by my husband, Craig, who recently took our two young children on a two day camping trip to Toad Suck Ferry Park near Conway, AR.

Camping with small children can be very exciting when you incorporate knives, axes and guns. I usually take along the big tent I got from www.tent.net/best-8-person-tent/, but since it was just the 3 of us and I wanted to teach them survival training I thought why not rough things a little bit this time and take only the necessities rather than going there by lavishly carrying everything we own. I recently took our five year old daughter and three and a half year old son on a camping trip by myself. I made sure to bring a cooler for camping so we didn’t get to hot. It was also accompanied by various other camping equipment which, one can trust Wildcat Outdoor Gear to buy from, come real handy when planning such trips. The main reason I wanted to go camping was so I could spend some uninterrupted time with our children (and because the Razorbacks were on a bye week).  By removing all of the distractions from home we found more time to play.  We rode bikes, we went fishing, and we even played bowhunters, attacking bad guy trees. Make the Kamp Rite Tent Cot comparison prior to your trip.

I also incorporated some survival skill training just in case our children find themselves in a Lord of the Flies scenario.  I showed them how to use a hatchet,

a survival knife,

and how to make a fire.

And, in case they found themselves in an episode of Lost I showed them how to inventory their supplies.

Despite all my attempts to prepare them for Survivor all they wanted to do was paint rocks.

Our kids caught five fish to include a 20” white bass with a three foot kid fishing pole, worms and bobber.  The secret is worm preparation – as demonstrated in this video:

Back in college I took a buddy of mine camping that was born and raised in India.  The concept of pretending to be homeless in the woods was lost on my Indian friend.  I remember him asking “Why are we camping?  What’s the reason for this?”  I had never really thought about it till then.  I told him it was about hanging out and sharing stories – making a human connection.  That seems a little harder to do now in a world that gets more populated by the day, but also gets more distant and isolated with electronic conveniences.  With that in mind, this recent camping trip with our children reminded me how to connect and play like a kid.

Related posts:

No related posts.