12 Ways to Homeschool While On Your Camping Trip
Two of my favorite things pair together perfectly – homeschooling and traveling. That’s one of the major advantages of homeschooling – you can do it pretty much anywhere. This means you can use your family’s vacations and trips to help your children learn.
Camping trips, in particular, give your family an amazing variety of things to learn about and explore in a new way.
Our family loves to camp. We find so many ways to incorporate homeschooling on our camping trips. We haven’t taken a camping trip in years that we didn’t do some sort of learning.
When planning a camping trip with your family you can use these tips to help make the most of your trip by taking your homeschooling lessons on the road. You’ll be able to cover important science, health, art, and even history topics with your children while enjoying the great outdoors!
Why Homeschool While You Are Camping
Although we like to take breaks from our schooling from time to time, camping trips are the perfect time to do some learning. We often find ourselves in historic locations, among new wildlife, or exposed to great learning conditions while on our camping trips.
There are so many opportunities to easily weave your homeschooling into your camping trips with little to no effort or prep. Many state and national parks offer educational programs and learning centers.
Plus, learning while camping happens naturally so the kids won’t even realize you’re checking off boxes for some of your homeschool learning objectives.
Easy Ways to Homeschool While Camping
Nature Journals
Like a garden journal, a nature journal is the best place to log and track what your child is learning on your adventures out in nature. While you can use the same journal for both it is easier to keep organized by giving your child a different journal for each of these subjects.
Pack your child’s nature journal for your next camping trip. Have your child use their nature journal to draw the things they see and make notes about what they are learning as they explore.
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To make it easier to take on the go, use a drawstring bag that can store your child’s nature journal in a waterproof bag. Toss a few pencils, erasers, and colored pencils so they’re ready to draw and write when you take a break on a hiking trip or something catches your child’s eye at the campsite.
First Aid Skills
Camping is a great time to work on learning basic first aid skills. Just like in scouting groups, your kid is more likely to see scrapes and bug bites out on a camping trip than in the backyard (especially if camping with my kids 😂)
You should always take a first-aid kit along with you on a camping trip so you will be ready to teach these vital lessons to your child in real-time when the need arises. If your child gets bored you can have them read the first aid guide that is often found inside first aid kits.
Another great way to incorporate first aid is to walk through hypothetical situations with the kids.
“What should you do if someone falls and sprains their ankle while hiking?”
“How would you handle an open wound on a friend if there aren’t any adults around?”
“What should you use to treat poison ivy?”
There are also some great guides on basic survival and first aid for kids.
Wants vs. Needs
What better chance to teach your child the difference between wants and needs than when they can not simply grab whatever they want.
Camping is the perfect time to learn about how things like food and shelter are vital but no one needs electronic devices for survival. When your child returns from your camping trip they should better be able to identify when they truly need something.
Take the time to unplug and leave the devices at home for your camping trip. Pack just the necessities and force the kids to come up with ways to keep themselves entertained during the trip.
They will be much more observant and open to learning about their surroundings when they don’t have unecessary gadets and devices with them.
How to Cook on an Open Fire
Knowing how to cook on an open fire is a great way to teach your child how to take care of their needs in a power outage where other cooking methods may not be an option. You can even teach how to use and care for cast iron cookware (I ruined many pieces of cookware belonging to my parents because I didn’t know any better).
Start with easy recipes and snacks. Roasting marshmallows and hotdogs is a great way to introduce them to cooking on the fire without having to be “in” the fire.
Then you can move to things like foil packets, hamburgers, and grilling veggies.
Be sure to go over fire safety with your kids first and make sure they’re supervised when cooking.
Explore Ecosystems
While your backyard may have a thriving ecosystem, that is just one type of ecosystem. Camping and hiking trips through state and national parks are a great opportunity to teach your child about different ecosystems and wildlife.
Take the time to explore on your camping trip and discuss the different ecosystems that make up the area around your camp and the animals that inhabit those areas.
Study the Stars
Most families live where the light pollution makes it too hard to truly see the stars at night. You can take advantage of your camping trip for your homeschool by taking the time to teach your child about the stars while they are able to take a look at them without all of the light pollutions they are so used to.
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Smartphone App-Enabled Telescope
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The Usborne Book of Astronomy and Space
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Buy Now → If you really want to give your child a view of the stars, book your camping trip at an international dark sky park for a breathtaking opportunity to see the milky way in all its glory. We visited Experience Learning in Circleville, WV and had an opportunity to experience a premier dark sky location at the Spruce Knob Mountain Center!
Explore the Weather in a New Way
When homeschooling in the garden you can explore the weather with your weather station and see how it affects your garden. You can also track and discuss the weather while on your camping trip the same way.
You can explore how weather affects all of nature while camping. Do the animals hide away from the summer heat and come out at night? Does the canopy of the trees help keep you dry? Do the fish the pod truly bite more when it is cold and wet rather than a hot summer afternoon?
More Posts About Homeschooling Outdoors
Learn to Forage and Identify Plants
Take a foraging guide with you on your camping trip so you can explore and look for edible plants on your camping trip. This is a great chance to teach your child how to identify plants and why it is so important to not eat a plant that they are unsure of.
Look for berries, herbs, and other fun edible plants that you can use in your camp meals for a fun way to spice things up.
Take PE Class Outdoors
Camping is a great time to participate in physical activities like hiking, kayaking and bike riding. Use your camping trip to easily get in your 30 minutes of movement.
Many campgrounds have basketball courts, volleyball nets and bike trails. You can also use your camping trip to learn new games and sports. Activities like horse shoes, geocaching, and archery are perfect experiences to do while camping.
Learn How to Fish
Learning how to fish is a great way to study the types of fish in a specific area, what types of bait work best or closely fit their diet, and how the food chain works.
You can easily turn fishing into a math activity by calculating the probability of catching a fish. You can even graph the types of fish or sizes of the fish you catch.
Explore Historical Sites
Many campsites are inside state and national parks that also contain historical sites that you can explore to bring a bit of history into your child’s camping homeschool plan.
Make a plan to stop and enjoy these offerings while on your camping trip to add this amazing opportunity to your child’s homeschool education.
If you really want to make your camping trip a history lesson, choose a campsite that is intentionally surrounded by these amazing opportunities.
Filter and Sanitize Water
Depending on where you are camping your water source may be limited. This is a great chance to teach your child about water filters like life straws and treatment chemicals used to kill bacteria in the water to make water safe for drinking.
This is also a perfect opportunity to teach your child a survival skill while helping them to learn about contamination and how bacteria can get into things like our water sources and cause us harm.
If your campsite needs treated water, bring along water treatment tablets and a quality filter. As a bonus, you can take the water filter lesson from these gardening homeschool tips on your camping trip and see which style filter gives you the best-tasting water.
