Here are some great ideas for activities your kids will enjoy during those long summer days of your family camping trips this summer.
Bubble Gum Art
Give each participant a piece of bubble gum to chew, a toothpick and an index card. Allow them 10 minutes to chew the gum, place gum on index card and then design something on index card using only the toothpick as a tool (No Hands). The person with the best and most creative design is the winner. If you have quite a few players you can have several categories of winners, like “most ingenious”, “most creative” and of course the “What is that?” Award.
Extreme Makeover: Parent Edition
This can be done in the evenings or at any other time during the day. Collect odd clothes, make up, hair gel, etc. Kids pick a parent they want to “makeover”.
They are given “X” amount of time to “makeover” their parent. After time is up the parents will present their kids creations in a silly fashion show. Encourage the kids to pick a theme and to have fun with it.
Award the kids with various prizes for different awards such as (best hairdo, best makeup, strangest outfit, etc.).
It is a lot of fun!
Group Knot
Have the kids stand in a tight circle, with their hands in the center. Then have them grab other hands at random. The puzzle is for the whole group to work together to get themselves untangled. Sometimes you’ll find that the group has actually formed several smaller circles.
Hide and Giggle
This is a fun game. Grab a bunch of blankets and sleeping bags. Open up the sleeping bags. Now you’ll have a huge pile of blankets. You may want to get stuffed animals too, so they look like people. One person is IT and leaves the room. Everyone else then scatters under the pile. The person comes back when all people are hidden. IT must then slowly wade on top of the pile and using only her hands gently poke the piles to guess who is under. You can only tickle in one spot for 10 seconds! If IT guesses the right name – then that person becomes the next IT. NO JUMPING ON THE PILE!!!
In my Grandmother’s Attic
The first player says, “In my grandmother’s attic, I found… (and names something that starts with “A”).” The next player says the same phrase, the object beginning with the “A,” and then something that begins with a “B.” Continue this way, each player reciting the previous items and adding another, all the way through the alphabet, to “Z.”
It Could be Worse
Set up the group in a circle or in pairs. The starting player says something innocuous, like “I almost overslept.” Next player says something like “It could’ve been worse. You could’ve been late.” Then the next, or other, says something worse, like, “It could’ve been even worse than that. You could’ve been in your underwear.” And then the next or other tries to find something worse than that. Or, the next person says “it could be better…” And so it goes.
