Creating memorable and fun experiences for your kiddos is what every parent is made for…right? Minus the essentials of feeding them, clothing them, and keeping them safe – those are important too! J
For sure the creativity part of parenthood is one of our favorite parts and this post is all about one super fun activity – creating a camping atmosphere inside for any time of the year and any age! Camping doesn’t always having to be “outside” and doesn’t always have to be for kids starting at a certain age. Keep reading and you will hopefully get lots of ideas to create the perfect camp-out inside with easy DIY’s and little to no cost (depending on what you already have around the house to use). Also – I have a FREE printable to invite your kiddo/s to the camp-out personally so make sure and grab that too before you go!
Let’s begin with the 7 essentials of any camp-out (inside):
1) A sign welcoming the campers!
2) Tent/teepee or something that resembles these in some way
3) Comfy colorful elements – blankets, pillows, etc.
4) Fire – fake of course
5) Lanterns and flashlights
6) Twinkle lights to resemble stars
7) Snacks and yummy drinks
How fun for your kids to see their name on a sign welcoming them to a camp-out in their own house!
I created this FREE printable so that you can do the same as we did! I’ve left our daughter’s name off the printable version that you can download so that you can write in your kiddo/s name!
Click on the image below to obtain the FREE printable as an 8×10″ PDF.
For our camp-out, we popped up our beach canopy in the basement – it very closely resembles a tent but completely open in the front as you can see below so it was perfect for our almost 18 month old who wouldn’t love being enclosed in a tent. We filled it with a colorful quilt, tons of pillows, stuffed animals, and decorated the outside with some fun fabrics and garland. It was a fun space to create for her for sure!
And then a view with the glow of the lantern!
No camp-out can take place without extra lights…so we stocked up the space with real lanterns, flashlights and string lights that brightened up the space on the rainy day we chose to do it on! Our lil one loves flashlights as I assume all kids do so that was a fun thing for her to enjoy that we usually don’t have laying out as a toy. * Safety Disclaimer: Always be careful to monitor kids with flashlights that are young as they might try to shine light in their eyes which isn’t safe.
The lantern that was just for her was probably my favorite part of the entire camp-out activity. My amazing husband/daddy came up with the idea and I had to share how kid friendly and easy it is to replicate for anyone! We just used a recycled applesauce container (the large kind, not individual snack pack type), a battery powered strand of mini lights we use at Christmas, and a pipe clamp we had laying around. All we had to do was remove the label on the applesauce container and toss the battery powered lights in. Using a power drill, my husband secured 2 screws in the top of the lid based around the clamp placement and it was complete! How fun is that! She absolutely loved carrying it around like she was a big girl!
We also created a fake fire because no camping experience is complete without a campfire. We just took a bucket and covered it in crumpled up yellow, orange, and red tissue paper we had laying around so they resembled flames. And then we took some recycled toilet paper rolls and colored lines on them to look like logs and viola – as you see in top left photo, we have a kid safe fire!
Using the puzzle play mats, create a sort of red carpet entrance to the camp-out (top right photo)!
A fun and easy way to project something onto a blank wall was with a flashlight propped up and a sticker sheet hanging about 1-2 feet away from light source (bottom photos in the grid below). Just another added atmosphere element.
Last but not least…you’ve got to have some snacks for a camp-out. Since we didn’t have a real fire then no roasting anything over the fire! But that doesn’t mean you still can’t have fun snacks to make it special. Since our lil one is still not able to eat a lot of your typical camping snacks, we filled a fun snack cup with puffs and animal crackers and she was all about it.
If you are reading this and drawing a blank on some fun camp-out snacks, keep reading for my suggestions below:
– Goldfish: kind of like you went fishing on the camping trip and caught some dinner!
– S’Mores Pie: Chocolate pie with graham cracker crust and marshmallows on top! See this fun recipe HERE at Gimme Some Oven, one of my favorite recipe sites out there!
– Popcorn and M&M’s: usually a movie snack but we had a movie playing for our lil one during camp-out so why not mash the two events together a tad
– Animal Crackers: learn about the different animal shapes and act like they are around your camp site
– Chocolate/candy of any kind
Thanks for coming along for the camp-out inside! Hope some of these ideas you can do for your kiddos and lots of memories are made!
Share away on social media with this fun friendly social media image below!
