Use these tips for a perfect first camping trip with your 5 year old.
This blog is normally about teaching your child to ski with you, but during the off months, I highly recommend camping with your kids whenever you can!
Sleeping Gear Tips for your kid’s first camping trip
1. Wear the right clothes to sleep snugly in your sleeping bag
We always bring a beanie for the night time. Normally this is the only part sticking out of the sleeping bag, so a nice warm beanie is a great way to make sure your kids sleep comfortably through the evening.
If we’re camping in the fall, winter, or spring, we also wear really light weight, long sleeves jammies like the one’s below. Something like this works great for both camping and as your regular ski gear (more advice here).
2. Get a good sleeping pad to stay comfortable and insulated from the ground
My wife and I use these old school sleeping pads below. There are lots of fancier one’s to buy, but these do the trick well for us:
For our kids, we use an inflatable air mattress. We bought a double bed version and put the kids on it in their sleeping bags and they love it and fall asleep quickly and comfortably. The mattress comes with an electric pump that your can plug into your car’s cigarette lighter to rapidly pump it up.
3. Get an easy-to-put-on pair of shoes for nighttime potty runs
Invariably, your child will need to make a potty run in the middle of the night. To be prepared, keep a pair of easy-to-put-on sandals that you can rush into and make it to the potty together. I suggest one pair for you and one for your child!
Meal tips for your kid’s first camping trip
4. Rub dish soap on the outside of pots and pans you cook with over flames or charcoal
Rubbing dish soap on the outside of pots and pans makes clean up a cinch. The alternative is lots of scrubbing to get soot off the outside of your cookware. And I mean lots! You can avoid is easily with a light layer of dish soap applied to the outside surfaces.
5. For your first dinner, keep it simple!
We love to use these backpacking meals that are ‘just add water’ for our first night. Inevitably, something on your first night doesn’t go as planned — you are running late and you need something quick and effective to get everyone fed! Here’s the meals we use that are more kid friendly versions of backpacking meals:
If you don’t want to boil water, another great option is a combination of hotdogs grilled on the grill or on the tips of sticks. We like to pair this with Polenta, which you can slice up and fry on an tray made out of aluminum foil.
6. For Breakfast, Keep it Simple!
Again, we love meals that are ‘just add water’. We like to boil water and make instant oatmeal. These variety packs below are great because invariably every child has their own favorite flavor. We’ll bring some raisons or dried cranberries to add a bit of flavor.
If boiling water is a challenge, we like to bring hard boiled eggs and breakfast sausage links cooked on the end of a stick or on the grill over the fire. You can also bring some Hawaiian Rolls to make breakfast sandwiches.
Tent Tips for your first camping trip
7. Get an easy-set-up tent
Tents these days are incredibly simple to put up and take down. Our car camping tent came from Coleman, and it is called an Instant Set Up. They are correct. I timed myself when we brought it home from the store and I set it up my first time in under 60 seconds.
They have lots of models and sizes, and they all range around $100 apiece. These tents have a lot of neat features like internal pockets and reflective guy lines to reduce tripping hazards at night. For car camping, they are the best family tent I’ve seen based on their simplicity and excellent features.
8. Set your tent up in your living room BEFORE you go camping
This tip probably goes without saying, but setting your tent up in your living room is the best 5 minutes you can spend before your camping trip to ensure a smooth experience.
9. Find the flattest ground at your camp site, and place your heads facing uphill
If you set your tent up on a hill, everyone will slowly slide to the lowest point of the tent, resulting in a jumble of limbs and bodies. You can avoid this by pitching your tent on the flattest ground you can find on your camp site. Also, work to clear away any large rocks, pine cones, sticks, or other protrusions to make sure your have a comfortable place to sleep.
Also, if you sleep with your head lower than your feet, you will wake up with a headache. So, face your pillows uphill if you need to pitch your tent on a slight slope.
Final Tips
10. Bring a bike or scooter to the campground
Kids LOVE to make laps around the campground on bikes and scooters. In fact, in non-global-pandemic times, this is a fantastic way to have kids meet and mingle in the campground by whizzing around the campground. I live in a hilly place, and most campgrounds are pretty flat, so the biking is a real novelty for the kids!
Here’s a bike recommendation with removeable training wheels, so it will work for a novice and intermediate biker as your child progresses:
And, here’s a scooter recommendation — we’ve got two of these at home and the kids love them!
11. Pick one place to put the car keys for the trip, and keep them there!
I can’t tell you how many stories we have heard about lost car keys while camping. As much as we don’t want to, we go into our car often to get a piece of gear, put something away, etc. It is easy with 2 adults going in and out of the car to misplace car keys. To avoid this — pick a place for your keys and make sure you put them back there after every trip to the car!
FINALLY — Enjoy your first camping trip. You will have a great time. This is an activity that is hard to do wrong. Your children will have so much fun with the change of scenery and excitement of camping. Use the tips above for a perfect first camping trip with your 5 year old.
What did we leave out? Share any of your own tips below please.
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