Nowadays, kids are accustomed to being entertained virtually twenty four hours per day.  Kids can watch TV, play video games, and surf the Internet.  These activities have become a crutch for many kids and allowed them to shut off the rest of the world.  You can bring them back into the world through camping games and fun activities. Let's first look at camping games.  A classic camping game is charades.  Each person is given a word which they must act out.  They can't speak and can only use their body language and actions to express the word.

Everyone else guesses what word they are trying to act out.  Charades is a fun game for people of all ages.

You will most likely go hiking or exploring during your camping trip.  Make a game out of spying items during your hike.  This game is sometimes called "I Spy" or "Twenty Questions".  One child will say that they spy something and the rest of the family members will have twenty questions to guess what it is.  The catch is that the child can only answer "yes" or "no" to the questions.

Bring allow paper, pencils, crayons, and markers.  Don't forget a clipboard or hard surface where children can use these items.  One fun activity while camping is to create leaf etchings.  Collect several different types of leaves in the forest.  Place one leave under a piece of white paper.  Gently rub a pencil back and forth on the paper over the leaf.  A beautiful leaf etching should appear.

An exciting activity that older children will enjoy on a camping trip is a Scavenger Hunt.  If you are going to do this camping activity then you will need to prepare ahead of time.  Create a list of items such as dice, balls, painted rocks, figurines, etc. that you want the children to search for.  You will hide these items around the campsite.  You can create clues as to their locations when you get to the campsite if you want to make the scavenger hunt more difficult.  Just make sure that you clean up after the scavenger hunt and don't leave litter in the wilderness!

You are likely to encounter rainy weather or your camping trip.  When the rain hits you can head into your tents and play board games.  Bring board games of all levels that will engage every family member.  It is a good idea to bring a deck of cards as well. 

Perhaps you would like to have quieter activities during your camping trip as well.  In this case, bringing books to read is a wonderful choice.  You can also bring your headphones and listen to audio books instead if you prefer.

Storytelling is another camping favorite.  You can sit around the campfire roasting marshmallows and tell ghost stories.  You can also create a story of your own.  One person tells the beginning of the story and then points to another family member to tell the story where they left off. 

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to keep your family entertained when you are "unplugged" while camping.  These camping games and activities are a blast and will prevent your child from becoming bored.