10 key benefits of camping with kids

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The 10 most important benefits of camping with your kids

a guest post written by Kyle Grey, founder of OutdoorIntensity.com

Nature is beautiful, and there’s nothing quite like exploring the wild and seeing what life has to offer outside of traditional modern conveniences.

In this guide, we’re going to explain the top 10 most important benefits of camping with your kids.

1.  Expose them to wildlife

If you live in a big city, there’s wildlife, but oftentimes, it’s not the kind of wildlife that you want your kids interacting with. At a campsite, your children can interact with fish, various insect species, smaller rodents like chipmunks, and they may even get to experience larger animals like deer and elk.

In any situation, seeing animals in their natural environments can be a real eye-opener for your kids; it may even help them understand how precious our environment is.

2.  Give them a chance to get some fresh air

It’s no surprise that cities have a tendency to have higher pollution rates than more countryside settings, so taking your children out camping in the sticks can really help them get a nice breath of fresh air.

There are a lot of benefits of getting some truly fresh air, including the fact that it cleans the lungs, grants energy, mental acuity, and can even make people happier. You’ll be amazed at how even the most lethargic of children will seem to get a boost of energy from going out camping.

3.  Nature helps us decompress from a stressful world

The grayish doldrums of the city can be almost completely dispelled by just spending a little bit of time at a campsite. Even for children, life can be stressful, so taking a camping vacation is a great way for your kids to get a bit of a vacay from their young and busy lives.

We all need to decompress from time to time, so take a little time with your kids in nature; you’ll notice that they will open up and seem more relaxed.

4.  Being outdoors helps families connect

Families can often disconnect from each other because of having to lead busy and separate lives. It’s a natural result of long days at work, after school activities for the kids, and everyone wanting to do their own thing when time is available.

When you’re out camping with your family, something amazing will happen: you’ll start to talk to each other. This important social connection is an amazing side effect of roughing it that should also be a major motivating factor for you to go camping together.

5.  They can learn how to build a fire

You never know when you’ll need survival skills. For this reason, going camping with your kids is a great opportunity for them to learn important skills like building a fire.

While no one wants the unfortunate to happen, when your kids possess this skill, you know that they’ll be prepared if they’re caught out at night in the cold and happen to be without a backpacker tent.

photo courtesy of pixabay.com

6.  They can learn how to catch their own food

Another camping skill that can be used in a survival situation is learning how to catch food. This can include a bit of light hunting with a bow and arrow or simply casting a line and catching some delicious fish.

Most kids can easily learn how to catch their own food when out camping, which can benefit them later in life should the need arise.

7.  It provides them with healthy exercise

Obesity, even amongst children, is a major health concern. In fact, in America, it’s one of the leading causes of deaths and is also known as the sitting disease.

If you want to prevent this disease from taking hold in your kids, getting them outdoors and active is a great way to help them appreciate staying in shape. Camping has a lot of great physical activity and uneven terrain that will really challenge your kids and keep them in shape.

8.  They learn to socialize with their peers outside of the social feed

For the younger generation, the social media networks are beginning to replace simple face-to- face socialization. In fact, many kids are meeting and befriending people online that they may never meet in real life.

With camping, especially at campgrounds, your children will get a chance to hang and explore with their peers in a non-electronic environment. This will boost their real life social skills and make them more adaptable as they socialize.

9.  Sleeping underneath the stars is an amazing experience

Light pollution is one of the features of city life that can really disrupt the majesty of nature. You simply can’t always see the stars when you’re in a city, but when you’re in nature, you can see the heavens in all of their majesty.

If your young ones are interested in astronomy, there’s no better venue for stargazing than a campsite. Sleep out under the stars from time to time and your kids will learn to appreciate the vastness of the skies.

10.  Campfire stories and s’mores!

While this might seem unimportant, just relaxing by the fire and roasting marshmallows or s’mores is a very rewarding experience for a child.

Stories are an extension of the oral tradition that has been so important for people over the ages and cooking food over the fire is just simple fun. It also has the added bonus of making your child feel included and part of the tradition.

Today’s modern life is often filled with electronics, the internet, and constant social updates that are meant to make us feel connected. That being said, there’s a whole wide world of experience out there that many of the younger generation aren’t getting exposed to.

Each of the activities that we mentioned in this guide will help bring your kids closer to nature, their family, and even their peers, so make sure that you take the time to go camping with them from time to time.

Author Bio  

Hey Everyone! My name is Kyle Grey and I am the guy behind Outdoor Intensity. I am an avid camper and have been camping for well over 10 years.

Camping and the outdoors is something that I am super passionate about and because of that I decided to share my experience and knowledge I've gained over the past 10 years.  Visit us over at OutdoorIntensity.com today!  

All photographs in this post belong to Tanya Raedeke, unless otherwise noted.

Thank you to Kyle Grey for sharing these fantastic key benefits of camping with kids. Any additional benefits you've noted from camping trips with your kids?  We'd love to hear them, so please comment below, thanks!