Taking the kids out on trip away camping can easily turn many people off camping with the family. Kids tend to have shorter attention spans, and stacks of energy, it can seem extremely difficult to both keep them focused and interested in coming out on trips away with you!

We have a handful of golden rules to making sure the young ones have an epic time away with you that they can brag about at show and tell when they get back to school!

1.Encourage participation

Whilst many kids may seem to want to spend more time on their digital devices than helping out, the feeling of contributing can be an extremely good motivator and will make them feel as if they are required and necessary parts of the group.

The best way to encourage their participation in the camping life is to offer them the reward of free time when the important jobs are done.

We love the Adventure Kings 10W Solar panel for keeping all of their USB devices charged when it’s time for the young ones to zone out, one of these will charge any USB powered device as long as there is sunlight!

2.Give them Meaningful tasks

By bringing the kids along you can make setting up camp a much simpler task, by taking the roll of your campsite leader and delegating all of the meaningful tasks, you not only reduce your workload but also give the kids something to be proud of.

Responsibilities like collecting firewood, preparing food, taking care of the washing up, and even lighting the fire (supervised of course) can give your kids stacks of confidence when they are back ‘in the real world’, and by giving them life skills like being able to unroll your Adventure Kings Awning and setup their own Adventure Kings Kwiky Single Swag on their own, they will appreciate things much more!

3.Keeping things fun and interesting

Like we said before, kids have short attention spans, so if all you do is sit around the campsite, the kids attention span will dissolve and they will get restless, by letting them choose the activity the group is doing they will feel 100% responsible for the amount of fun they have and will also give you a bit of insight into what they are interested in.

It is also important to let them play around, if you are too strict, you’ll take some of the fun out of it – they are kids after all and their creativity is something you should learn to enjoy!

When planning activities you can do with your kids, one of the most overlooked activities is food preparation and cooking, it seems like a pretty ordinary task, but by giving your kids lots of small jobs they will learn the processes involved in cooking and eventually will be able to cook for themselves.

Our favorite recipe for kids to try is cooking up some damper loaves, the recipe is simple enough, take a large bowl and mix up 3 cups of self-raising flour, a pinch of salt, create a small well in the middle and gradually add a cup of chilled milk (from your Adventure Kings 60L Fridge Freezer) till you have a thick dough.  There are 2 ways to cook your damper bread, the first is to chuck it inside a preheated Bedourie camp oven on top of the hot coals of your campfire, this will cook a large loaf in about 30 – 40 minutes. You can check if the loaf is done by tapping it with the back of a knife, if it sounds hollow you are ready to eat.

The next way to cook it tends to be the most fun with kids, if you tear off a handful of dough, and wrap it around the end of a clean stick that is around arm’s length, and by making a bulb on the end of the stick, you can insert the stick into the hot ashes around the base of your fire by being on the end of a stick you’ll find the damper cooks more quickly than in the camp oven, and is complete with a hole in the middle you can fill with golden syrup, the perfect sweet desert for the kids!

With a few tips and tricks you can make the kids time away much more enjoyable and make memories that’ll last for an entire lifetime – don’t hesitate to grab the kids and getaway for the long weekend thanks to a bit of creativity and your Adventure Kings camping setup