Things to Do While Camping (a Family Activity Guide)

The daytime is the actual trip

A campsite isn't a hotel room — you're not meant to sit in it. The whole point is the hours between breakfast and the fire, and you don't need a packed itinerary to fill them. A ball, a list, a phone, and a trail will cover most of a camp day. Here's the menu.

Get out and explore: hiking

The original camp activity, and the easiest. Keep it short for little legs, bring water and a snack, and let the kids set the pace — the goal is the bugs and the creek and the cool rock, not the miles. A scavenger hunt turns a "boring walk" into a mission.

Down by the water: fishing

Few things hold a kid's attention like a bobber. You need a cheap rod, a bit of tackle, and — for the adults — a fishing license (check your state's rules, kids are usually free). Even a fishless afternoon by the water counts as a win.

Look up: bird watching

This one costs nothing but your eyes. A cheap pair of binoculars and a free bird-ID app (Merlin is the popular one) turn it into a game the whole family can play, and it's perfect for the quiet morning hours before everyone's fully awake.

Bring a ball (or a frisbee): camp games

The best fun-to-effort ratio in all of camping. Toss a frisbee and a ball in the car and you're set:

• Frisbee — and improvised frisbee golf: pick your "holes" (that big pine, the picnic table, the trash can by the bathrooms), count your throws, lowest score wins. A whole afternoon for the price of a frisbee.
• Kickball, catch, and football — any flat-ish clearing becomes the field. A kickball, or a couple of gloves and a baseball, or a football, and you've got a game.

Treasure hunting: geocaching

The sleeper hit. Geocaching is a worldwide GPS treasure hunt: people hide little containers ("caches") in clever spots everywhere, and you track them down with a free phone app. There's almost certainly one near your campsite already. It's free, it's part treasure hunt and part real-world video game, and kids absolutely lose it when they find the first one. Start at geocaching.com — our scavenger hunt game guide has more on making the jump from list-hunting to GPS caches.

The classic: a camp scavenger hunt

Nothing keeps kids moving like a list and a mission. Find a pinecone, a Y-shaped stick, something red, an animal track, a feather — works on the drive in, around the site, or on a hike. Grab our free printable camp scavenger hunt (four checklists in the printable pack) and hand each kid a pencil.

Activity and dessert in one

The ice cream ball is the daytime cousin of the pie iron — kids shake and roll cream and ice in a ball for twenty minutes, and dessert appears. For campfire-night snacking instead, see the popcorn popper.

When the sun goes down

Daytime activities hand off to the fire. Roll into campfire games for the whole family — the night-time version of keeping everyone happily busy.

The real secret

You don't need to buy much or plan much. The families who camp best aren't the ones with the most gear — they're the ones who brought a ball, made a list, and followed the kids' curiosity. And if the weather turns, that's not the end of the day either: see camping in the rain. Just getting started? Start at the Trailhead.