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Writer's pictureMandie Kramer

Tips for Camping With Kids

Updated: Nov 14, 2021

This article summarizes an interview with Donna, a camping-with-kids expert! From the first week her daughter was born, Donna and her husband Daniel have made the outdoors a core value within their family, and their now 16-year-old embraces the wilderness as her parents do.


Don't have time to read? Please check out this amazing podcast episode on The Wander Mom Diaries Podcast!



You'll learn tips for camping with kids from infants to teens! This article will help your kids love the outdoors as much as you do! And if you have an older child, don't worry, there is still hope. It is never too late to love nature if you approach it from the right angle, all of which you learn in this article.


This article will cover the following topics!


It's never too late to get involved with camping and the outdoors


Donna is originally from Michigan her parenthood started in Northern California, so most of her camping and hiking has been in the Sierra Nevada mountains of northern California.


“I never even went camping until I was an adult actually high school was the first time I went on a backpacking trip through a third group on the Appalachian Trail and I just loved it. When I moved to Northern California, it's just so beautiful here, so it just became part of my daily life to you know, be outside and I spent some time as a whitewater rafting guide. So I literally lived outside for many summers and went. After marrying my husband, and he's very much an outdoors person too, we just knew that in having children that [the outdoors] was not something we were going to give up, it was so important to us. So when my daughter was born, it was number one, we have to teach her to love the outdoors just like we do.”


Start small and simple


Do your homework be prepared. It is easy to wing it if you are an adult or with a group of adults while camping or hiking, but with children, you really have to be prepared, you don’t want to ruin your child's love of being out in nature over something that could have been easily avoided. Get the basics! bug sprays, Sun repellent, whatever the conditions dictate, be prepared for the environment.

It is good to start someplace that you have been before or have explored or become familiar with it. Check the weather forecast: pay attention to what to expect weather-wise and be extra prepared with clothing, especially if they are young kids and can have the chance to soil themselves or get really muddy.

Donna hiking with her baby in California

Start small, especially for overnight camping trips, don't plan a week. The first time you go camping with your kid, just go for one night and slowly build up from there. The idea is that you don’t make it too overwhelming from the beginning, for both you and your child.

Camp overnight at a place that is close to home, so worse case, you just come home! You can even start in your backyard. It is a great opportunity to get used to the environment and experience (and temperature changes) of being outside, and it is an excellent way to test your equipment before traveling further away. It can also help you as adults with the overnight jitters of trying out camping for the first time with your kids.


Tent camping tips for Infants

There is no wrong way to camp, but Donna recommends one large tent where everyone can fit. She started camping with her daughter when she was a baby, so they had a large tent with a very comfortable big foam pad and then piled on the blankets.

Baby taking a nap in the camping tent.

Sleeping bags for babies is not a good idea. The pack and play might work but it is difficult to regulate how warm your child is. In the end, it is your decision on what is best and safest for your child, but Donna felt most comfortable with a big foam pad with blankets that way so they could share the body heat and the baby she was right next to her. Having her with her or “bedsharing” allowed Donna to monitor the baby and she would know immediately if she was comfortable, if she was sleeping, or if she was in trouble.


It depends on your climate as well. If you are camping where it doesn’t get very cold at night, then a pack and play may work fine if that is what you prefer, just know that if it gets below 65 at night, you need to be extremely cautious about your child getting too cold. Safety first, and if you want to have the amazing experiences camping brings, it is perfectly fine to temporarily change the sleep environment if it is what is safest and most comfortable.

Air mattresses are very popular as they are light and easy to pack than a large foam pad, but they sometimes lose air overnight and can be unreliable as far as holes and punctures. So if you have the space, splurge on a nice foam pad for your family because getting a good night’s sleep is going to lead to many more successful camping nights!

“I asked her [my daughter] to share with me what made her love camping so much when she was real little... and one of the things she brought up was that she really did love that it was so cold at night because she felt warm and snug with us in the morning...that was one of the things that were fun for her was those temperature extremes. She just thought that was you know, it was different and fun.”

Kid’s Toys

It is easy for kids (and parents) to want to bring everything and anything they can for an overnight trip. To avoid the common mistake of overpacking and running out of room, get a bag, a small bag, about half the size of a typical grocery bag.

Maya helping with camping chores!

Let your child decide what they wanted to bring, but it had to fit in that bag. Realistically, once you start camping, they may hardly even play with the toys that they brought. They were helpful in the car, but because there's so much out in nature to play with, the toys are not necessary for the actual camping experience. So, less is more with the toys.


Food prep is one of the most powerful things to help your trip

It's best if you can make as much food at home as possible before the trip so you're not having to spend a lot of time cooking or trying to prepare a meal and cut veggies in the middle of a rainstorm!


Donna shares multiple meal ideas in the podcast episode, but one thing she mentioned was preparing salmon burgers ahead of time. She had them all ready to go, all you needed to do was fry them up!


Pre-making and prepping the food is a very impactful thing you can be proactive about when preparing for your trip. I remember the days before having a baby and how we would just stop at a gas station and grab some bread, meat, and cheese and be good! Now I need to be much more prepared so that I can enjoy the experience and not stress about cooking or food prep.

Pre-cutting fruits and veggies is key!

This means cutting up veggies beforehand, scrambling eggs and putting them in baggies, prepping and marinating meat, cutting up fruit, cutting up salami, cutting up cheese, and having containers or bags of prepared food ready to eat or ready to throw in the pan to fry up is the way to go!


You can pre-bake as well, Donna shares her friend’s recipe for a full meal in a roll! A super easy grab-and-go dinner for the kids that is healthy and filling. Click here to Jump to the recipe for “anything Goes stuffed Rolls!”.

You can never have too many snacks if you’ve got kids. Especially when camping because they are moving around and active, they stay up later and are always hungry Whatever you plan to bring for sacks, pack an extra container to be safe! You can make it a variety as well Include sweet, salty, crunchy, chewy, and wherever else your children enjoy snacking on. Include fun drinks and treats for them as well, hot chocolate, juice boxes, smores, all of those things make the experience really rewarding for the kids and get them excited about camping again.


Arrival Checklist

Always arrive with plenty of daylight left to set up your camp. You never want to be in the scenario where you are arriving too late and have tired, cranky, hungry kids and still need to set everything up!


Make a routine for your arrival. Teach your child about the bathroom, scout out the different facilities, teach them what they can do in an emergency, all of these things you can do calmly and effectively if you arrive with plenty of time to get set up and unwind from the ride.

If there are bathroom facilities, great, but if you’re really rustic and in the woods, dig holes for your child in advance and help them use the “bathroom” until they can do it independently. You should always dig holes away from a water source. From the Leave No Trace website, they state that holes should be at least 200 feet (about 70 adult paces) from water, trails, and camp and dig a hole 6-8 inches deep and 4-6 inches in diameter.

Another tip from Donna is to do 2 piece pajamas (instead of the popular one-piece) because if they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you don't want to have to take off a one-piece thing where their whole body is exposed to the chilly air.


Engage with your child


Make it fun for kids by keeping them involved. Remember that camping is kind of new to them and at first, it’s not really your trip, it's their trip. You need to be really patient, pay attention and engage with your child, and explore nature together.

Let your little one get dirty!

Look at the leaves, count the rocks, there's so much out there and they're so observant of things, so embrace that, and let them get dirty!


“I've even gone as far as buying like thrift store clothes for the trip. So I'm not worried about oh yeah, favorite shirt, it's dirty. Don't worry about that. Let them really enjoy where they are, and make it special.”


As your child grows, then everybody gets more freedom, so invest in the time and energy to make it enjoyable for your child when they're young so that when they're older, you can all be a bit more independent in your camping activities.



Strategies for taking teens camping


Having a special space special spot where you consistently go every year is something that your child can look forward to and even fully understand the experience because it is familiar to them. Having a secret family spot was one of the things Donna’s now 16 year old still loves to visit every year and holds them accountable to ensure they make it there!


Let your teen bring a friend camping

If you are a parent of a teenager reading this, this is a great time in their life to help them understand independence and freedom in a safe and fun way. In the interview, Donna talks about a wilderness trip coupled with another family of teens where they got all their gear and canoed for a few hours to a secluded wilderness area. The teens were free to explore and enjoy nature and feel that “freedom”. Donna said it was one of her favorite trips ever.


As your child gets older, you need to adapt to their values, and teens these days greatly value connection, social media, and their friends in general. Donna has addressed this adjustment into adolescence by letting her daughter bring a close friend or two with them on adventures. So if you have a resistant teen, try this approach to help pique their interest.

Have fun with your kids!

Another topic that is addressed is the importance of having a fresh and new experience when you go camping. While the is nothing wrong with being very comfortable in a camper with a TV and portable hot-spot, it starts to feel like you are taking home somewhere else, a place that is less convenient than home. This is where you may get resistance from teens or tweens because you are inconveniencing them. If you go out camping, try to do things that you don’t normally do at home to make things engaging and exciting!






Recipe for “Anything Goes Camping Meal Rolls”!


Anything Goes Stuffed Rolls


Makes approx. 24 rolls and takes about an hour to hour and fifteen minutes


These rolls are stuffed with anything you can come up with for the ultimate custom snack!

Make bread/roll dough, divide it up, roll it out, place filling in, then seal and bake.

(The dough recipe is set up to be fast-rising so a large amount of yeast is correct).

For the dough:

½ cup lukewarm water

2 cups warm milk

3 Tablespoons room temperature butter

2 Tablespoons sugar5

1 Tablespoon salt

2 ½ Tablespoons yeast (instant yeast is best)

6-7 cups all-purpose flour


  1. Combine flour, milk, butter, sugar, salt, yeast in the mixer. Let sit about 6 minutes or so until the yeast begins to foam

  2. Add 6 cups of the flour and mix on low until a smooth ball begins to form. Add the last cup of flour if needed to make a soft, smooth, elastic ball of dough. Mix about 7-8 minutes. The dough should be elastic and slightly tacky to touch.

  3. Place dough into a greased bowl and let rise at room temperature for about 20 minutes or until the dough is puffy. (You can make the filling while the dough is rising).

  4. Deflate the dough and pat it out to a rectangle about 8 x 12. Cut dough into 4 long strips (lengthwise) then cut each strip into 6 pieces so you have 24 dough pieces.

  5. Form each dough piece into a ball and cover with a damp cloth to keep dough balls wet while you roll each out and fill.

  6. Take a dough ball and roll it out to approx 5 -6 inch circle. Put about 2 Tablespoons of filling in it then take corners of the dough circle and bring them together so the dough is a filled ball. Pinch opening closed and press down lightly if necessary so you have a roll shape. Place on a baking sheet. Repeat until all dough balls are filled. You will probably need 2-3 baking trays. Space balls apart so there is room for them to expand. You may want to do 8 filled rolls on 3 trays or 12 on 2 trays if you have half-sheet size trays.

  7. Cover dough balls and preheat oven to 350.

  8. When the oven is ready, place baking trays into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes rotating trays halfway through. They should be golden brown. Brush with melted butter for extra deliciousness. (If you want the rolls to be shiny, just before baking, brush each roll with a mixture of an egg white and a tablespoon of water. Put sesame seeds for garnish.)





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