Camping Theme Ideas and Games
My daughter’s school is currently doing a HUGE camping theme combined with reading for the month of April. They jazzed up the school with tons of camping decorations and are encouraging all students to read for at least 20 minutes per day. It really helps to break the monotony up this time of year to get over the hump until summer! Here are some camping theme ideas you can try at home (birthday parties) or your classroom to start getting excited about warmer weather!
Camping Theme Ideas
My daughter’s school went crazy really transforming the school, but your camping theme ideas don’t have to require that much prep work. You can keep it simple.
Depending upon the age of your students you could do:
- Read around a pretend campfire (orange and yellow tissue paper)
- Camping snacks – smores, gummy worms, forest berries, raisins for scat, etc
- Set up a tent for a quiet reading area
- Put center activities in coolers instead of bins or boxes
- Write or tell ghost stories
- Take a nature walk and read outdoors
- Hang up this FREE I Love Camping poster
- Teach a lesson outdoors
- Make trail mix
- Find a penpal and write letters
- Write in a camping journal – free printable here
Camping Theme Games
Don’t forget to add some camping theme games to add your FUN! Here are few super easy ones to get you started:
Play games sitting around your pretend campfire:
1. Who Said That? This is great for a large group of people who are all different ages. Prior to sitting around the campfire, have everyone write down (in their trickiest handwriting) one fact about themselves i.e. I once ate a piece of dog food by mistake (I know gross but someone actually said this when we played it once).
Fold up the slip of paper and put it in a hat. When sitting around the campfire, give one person a flashlight to start. This person picks out one slip of paper and has to guess who wrote the fact. If they get it correct, pass the flashlight to the person who wrote it and that person picks a slip of paper. If they get it wrong after three guesses the person owns up to who wrote it and they still go next. Continue until all of the slips of paper have been read.
2. Five Daily Facts: Go around the circle and each person says five facts about their day or a few days i .e. today I ate ice cream. Tomorrow I will go swimming. etc. When each person has said five facts start at the beginning of the circle and try to remember them all. Player one says one statement that was not his/her own. Player two says a different statement. See how many you can remember. It is harder than you think.
3. Name that Tune: Depending upon the ages playing, we usually start humming a few bars and whoever guesses it first goes next. Sometimes we do themes – nursery rhyme songs, 80’s tunes, etc.
4. Pass the Ghost Story: Player one starts the story with one sentence. Player two adds the next sentence. Continue around the campfire with each person adding one sentence. Try to make it around the circle twice and then finish the story.
Even more games for sitting around your pretend campfire:
Word Categories: pick a theme and then a word. For example:
- The theme is camping
- The word is tent
- Taking turns, think of a word related to the theme of camping that starts with each letter of your word
- T – tent
- E – earthworm
- N – night time
- T – trees
Now pick a new theme and a new word.
First and Last Again think of a theme. The challenge is to say a word and the next person has to say a word that starts with the last letter of the previous word. For example:
- Theme – Summer
- First Word – hot
- Next word must start with a T – towel
- Next word must start with a L – lake
- Keep going until someone can not think of a word.
First and Last Name Game Pick a group of people and see how many first and last names you can remember. We like to play First and Last Names of the school staff. You could do people from a certain state, movie stars, musicians, elementary school friends, etc.
Camping Theme Ideas – Independent, NO PREP Fun Activities and Games
If you are looking for more camping themed games to print and play check out:
Camping Games and Activities – includes 25 fun puzzles, mazes and games to play while on a camping trip or anytime!
Camp Chat – get the conversation going with questions about camping, the outdoors, memories and more! You will learn so many new things about everyone sitting around the campfire.
