Camping with Kids

Camping with kids is great family fun. We are all kids at heart when it's time to go camping, but when your camping trip includes young children, some extra planning and precautions will make the trip more fun and memorable.

Kid's Clothing

Camping with Infants

Here are some additional tips to help you start thinking ahead about camping with children:

• Teach young children to stay within eyesight, and older children within earshot.
• Teach children to stay where they are if they discover they are lost. Instruct them to find a nearby tree and stay with it until they are found.
• Children over the age of four can carry a simple survival kit, or at least a whistle around their neck to call for help when lost. The standard distress signal is three blows to indicate "I'm lost" or "I need help.
• Sort and pack each day of your children's clothes within individual small plastic grocery bags in his/her suitcase. This way your child can grab a bag in the morning and have a full set of clothes for the day, and at night he/she can stuff the dirty ones back in the bag, thus not mixing up the rest of the suitcase.
• Children get cold faster than adults. The key to comfortable camping with kids is to dress them in several layers, which can be peeled off as they get warm or added on as they cool off.
• Provide each child with a flashlight. To prevent any arguments, make sure each one has their own.
• Children love to play with flashlights, and having one also makes them more at ease after dark.

Image from the book Knack Car Camping for Everyone, by Bill and Mary Burnham; photographs by Stephen Gorman. Copyright © 2009 by Morris Book Publishing, LLC. Used by permission of FalconGuides, a division of Globe Pequot Press. Visit Falcon.com.