Our Top Camping Activities

Camping – ah all that outdoor living, warm balmy evenings, freshly cooked food on the campfire and happy children!  Ok, it doesn’t always go to plan, but campers are a hardy sort who don’t let a few drops of rain get in the way of a good time and, if you are camping this year, we hope you have a great time.

It’s a really good idea to keep working on developing speech and language skills wherever you are, and a camping trip is no exception.  Our speech and language games can be easily adapted to a holiday under tarpaulin - here’s some ideas to start you off!

Before and After

These words can be really tricky because their meaning changes depending on where they come in the sentence

Teach your child the A and B rules from the worksheet and then get them to complete two different actions using before and after in different positions e.g.

Clean your teeth before you collect firewood.

Before you clean your teeth, collect the firewood.

You can go swimming after you have washed up.

After swimming, you can wash up.

What’s in the box?

Gather some objects from around your camp e.g.  torch, compass, mug, spoon, marshmallows etc.

Show your child as you place them in the box (bucket or washing up bowl).

Now give your child clues and see if your child can guess the object you are describing e.g. “This is soft and pink and you eat it.” (marshmallow)

Show the child the item once they have guessed (sometimes bring out the wrong item and see if your child can tell you why it is wrong).

Draw it

Play this game to help your child learn to follow instructions that involve the words first and last

You will need paper and colouring pencils

Give your child instructions using first, then and last e.g. “First draw a tent, then colour it green.  Now draw a torch and a spoon. Colour the torch last.”

Fewer instructions will make the game easier – more instructions will make it harder.

Gymnastics

Work on action words and how each word changes depending on whether the action is completed in the past or present tense.

Set up an obstacle course around the camp and give instructions e.g. “Run around the chair and jump on the lilo.”  Ask them to tell you what they did.  If they make a mistake repeat what they have said using the right words

e.g Child: “I runned around the camp and jump on the lilo.”

     Adult: “Yes, you ran around the camp and jumped on the lilo.”

You can make this harder using actions that have different words for the past tense e.g (eat, ate) (run, ran) (swim, swam)

Many more activities are on The Parent Portal that can be adapted for camping trips.  We hope you have fun trying them out.