7 Great Ways To Add Education To A Camping Trip
When it comes to getting outside with your family and spending some well-deserved time in nature, few activities can compete with camping. It’s just such an amazing chance to get away from city crowds and immerse yourselves in the outdoors!
When many families think about camping, images of fireside s’mores, card games with the kids, or relaxing in the hammock are the activities that come to mind. However, camping trips also offer plenty of great opportunities for experiential learning while still keeping things fun!
Camping together as a family offers all sorts of amazing benefits, for your family, whether you add in an intentional educational aspect or not. However, adding some educational components to your trip can really help take your trip to the next level, and it doesn’t even have to be all that hard.
Check out these simple ways to add some education to your family’s next camping trip!
Teaching about Ecology while Camping
Normally, my Ecological Field Trips category is where I put trips and experiences that don’t easily fit into one of my other trip categories. However, camping is such a broad activity that encompasses so much learning that it fits perfectly in a “catch-all” kind of category.
At its most basic, ecology is the study of how organisms, including humans, relate to one another and their surroundings. It’s a branch of science that covers all sorts of information, from something as simple as the food chain to more difficult concepts like the environmental impact of human presence on different regions. While that breadth means you’ll never be able to teach your kids everything about ecology, it also means that no matter where you’re camping there will certainly be something ecological worth learning.
One of my favorite ecological learning experiences with the kids happened completely by accident during a camping trip in Wisconsin when someone from the USGS showed up to our campground to give a presentation on the effects of storm drain runoff, complete with a live demonstration. Other times, we were the teachers ourselves, like when we taught our kids about the importance of wetlands to preventing flooding while exploring a swamp in Louisiana.
Some great topics on ecology include:
- The water table and springs
- Fire prevention and safety
- The impact of plastics and trash on the environment (pollution)
- The impact of invasive species on local flora and fauna
- Monoculture farming and its effect on the environment
And more!
Teaching about Botany while Camping
In my experience, the vast majority of campsites tend to be surrounded by plants, making a camping trip the perfect time to talk about botany!
For younger kids, this could be as simple as exploring the woods around you for flowers or seeds, and discussing what plants need in order to grow. Older kids can learn about concepts like photosynthesis, and, depending on where you are, you may even be able to forage edible plants for some of your meals.
Mushrooms aren’t technically plants, but wild mushroom hunting can be an incredible educational experience for your family as well. Just be sure that you know what you’re doing, as many species of mushroom are dangerous to consume.
What botany topics you decide to tackle depend largely on where you are in the world and what time of year it is. Here are some of my favorite topics!
- Tree identification
- Flower identification
- Useful plants and what they’re used for
If you need some help with this one, there are some excellent apps for plant identification, or you could take pictures to bring with you on a trip to an Arboretum, which is a great field trip itself! Just be sure to take clear pictures that include the leaves, stem, and roots when possible, as well as any flowers, fruits, or seeds that you can see. In my experience, the botanists at most arboretums love helping kids with plant identification, so it’s definitely worth tracking one down!
Plant ID Apps
Most of the best Plant ID apps are, unfortunately, paid apps. However, many of them have free trials for those interested in giving them a go before paying up. Barring the paid apps, Google Lens does a fairly decent job of bringing up pictures of plants that might be what you’re looking at, but if you want a completely accurate identification, you shouldn’t rely on it.
Here are some (mostly) free Plant ID apps to try:
Plant.ID – An AI-based plant identification website that allows up to 10 free identifications each month
iNaturalist – A non-profit organization run app with a community of over 400,000 users. The app is free to use!
Google Lens – Google Lens is most likely already on your phone! If you open the Google app or a new tab in Chrome, there will be a camera icon in the search bar. Tap that camera, take a picture of your plant, and let Google do the rest! It is, unfortunately, hit-or-miss on accuracy, but it works well enough that I keep going back.
Teaching about Zoology while Camping
Zoology is another favorite topic for a lot of families, and can often be just as simple as botany. Zoology is all about studying the animals around you, whether that be smaller critters like squirrels or birds or larger ones like bears!
Animal spotting is one of my personal favorite activities, and we almost always take opportunities to learn about the local fauna wherever we find ourselves, even when we aren’t camping. However, I love the sorts of animal encounters that can happen during camping trips. We’ve had all sorts of animals wander through our campsites from racoons looking to steal our scraps to an entire herd of bison just wandering through! Adding a nature hike onto your camping trip can often increase your likelihood of spotting some great animals as well, and, depending on where you are, the camp itself may have tips for exploring the local fauna.
Remember! Wild animals are wild and can be dangerous to approach. Keep your distance from whatever animals you spot, even if you think they’re harmless! Squirrels bite, deer kick, and a bison can walk away from totaling your car.
Some of my family’s favorite zoology activities include:
- Safari – Keep your eyes peeled for animals whenever you’re driving through wild places!
- Bird watching
- Nature Hikes – The slower you move, the more chance you have of spotting something wonderful!
Teaching about Geology while Camping
There are plenty of great ways to add education to your camping trips, but this one really rocks! (Pun absolutely intended.) Geology is the study of the earth beneath our feet, including geologic activity, cave formation, and paleontology (for the dinosaur lover in your family)!
The earth is always beneath us, whether we’re camping or not, and if we take the time to pay attention to it, there’s a ton that an area’s geology can teach you. However, if you aren’t well-versed in an area’s geology, it can be a tricky subject to explore on your own.
National Parks’ Visitors Centers will often have exhibits on the park’s geology, which makes them excellent places to start if you have access to one. If not, it can also be worth doing some research into the geologic makeup of the area where you’re camping. Are the exposed layers from the times of the dinosaurs? Older? Are there special formations in the area you should be aware of? Caves? Hot Springs? Volcanoes?!?
All of it is geology!
Some of my favorite geology activities include:
- Fossil Hunting or Rock Hounding
- Spelunking (with a guide)
- Relaxing in a hot spring (with discussions on what makes the water hot)
- Admiring any special features in the area (canyons, basalt columns, geysers, petrified forests, etc.)
Teaching about Astronomy while Camping
The night sky is with us no matter where we may be, however, teaching kids about astronomy while camping has a few big advantages over attempting to do the same in your backyard.
First and foremost is the fact that more than 99% of all Americans live in areas with high levels of light pollution. Getting away from the city and into wilderness areas is one of the best ways to really experience the beauty of the night sky!
If astronomy is on your list of camping activities, I highly recommend taking the time to find a campsite in a dark sky park, if possible. I loved stargazing in Badlands National Park, and America has several National Parks in dark sky reserves. If you aren’t able to make it to one of those, though, you can also check out this dark sky map from Hipcamp to find a site closer to home. (Plus, if you sign up for HipCamp with this referral link or using the code JACOBS74d938, you can get $10 off the cost of your campsite!)
Some of my family’s favorite astronomy activities include:
- Stargazing (with or without a telescope)
- Looking for constellations
- Moon-gazing
- Watching for shooting stars (during meteor showers)
- Rocket Launches
- Astrophotography
- And more!
Telescopes, tripods, cameras, and apps for star-gazing
If all you’re doing is looking at the stars, you don’t really need a telescope to pull it off. However, if you’re wanting to see the moon in more detail, capture the beauty of the night sky, or possibly even see another planet, you’re going to need some tools.
This telescope magnifies celestial objects anywhere from 15x to 150x, depending in which lenses you’re using! That’s enough magnification to see Saturn!
I don’t have one yet, so I can’t speak to its ease of use, but it does have 4.3 stars on Amazon after nearly 3,000 reviews, so I’m thinking it’s trustworthy.
I can’t recommend any professional cameras for astrophotography, as that is outside my particular experience set. What I can recommend is getting a phone from the Google Pixel line of phones. I’ve been using them for years and have repeatedly been impressed with the professional quality of the photos they produce, including both of my sky pictures above.
Use my referral code when buying the Pixel 7a from the Google store to get $50 store credit to put towards an accessory like the Pixel Buds or Watch!
Google Referral Code:
G9MZHVVHJFRD138HHYTNACY
The Star Walk 2 app is my go-to astronomy app for finding constellations, planets, and more to show my kids.
It lines up with the stars using my phone’s gyroscope so I can tell where exactly I should be looking if I want to see different things, which is highly helpful.
It is available for Android or Apple via their different app stores.
Teaching about Archaeology while Camping
Archaeology is the study of historic and prehistoric humanity through the study of material remains. And it’s probably not the first field of study that you think of when you consider going camping. Even so, there is a wealth of human history worth exploring throughout the forested lands of the United States!
Most archeological sites that have already been discovered are protected, so most likely you won’t be camping right in among them. But if archeology is something that interests your family, it is really easy to find sites to visit as a way of adding educational value to your trip.
Petroglyphs, in particular, are quite common all across the States, and there are places where you can visit mounds or other structures built by indigenous peoples during America’s history. American Indigenous peoples tended to use more organic materials to build their houses and settlements, so there are fewer sites left to visit than in places where people tended to build with stone, but you can find some.
Teaching about History while Camping
Where archeology is specifically the study of human history through material remains (i.e. stuff), history encompasses all of our historical knowledge, including what we know from written and oral records.
So much of history happens in the wide open spaces between our towns and cities, which, conveniently enough, is where people tend to go camping! Our family talked about the founding of Jamestown and Blackbeard’s treasure while camping at First Landing State Park. We did dispersed camping in the Black Hills so we could visit Mt. Rushmore and Crazy Horse. And we discussed the wealth of the Carnegie family in the 1920s while looking at the Dungeness ruins on Cumberland Island.
I feel like discussing history while we’re in the places where it actually happened really helps kids to hear the events. It gives them sensory anchors that they can connect with the events and helps them to recall the stories later. I love this, and think that it is one of the best possible ways to teach history, if you can.
Some of my family’s favorite history activities include:
- Checking out historical marker signs
- Visiting important historical locations near our campgrounds
- Discussing any major historical events from the general area
- Historical reenactment sites
Teaching about Gastronomy while Camping
While I typically consider gastronomical field trips to be explorations of other cultures through their cuisine, I think the argument can be made for learning about “camping culture” through food as well!
Camping trips are the perfect time to get your kids involved in meal planning and prep, in large part because it tends to feel more like an adventure and less like a chore when you get to cook over a fire or camp stove. Both planning and preparing meals helps teach kids important mathematical and time management skills, and at the end of your lesson you get food!
It’s a lesson that can be as simple or complex as necessary to line up with the skills your kids already have, and is a fun way to add some practical learning into a camping trip!
Some of my family’s favorites include:
- S’mores!
- Hot dogs/burgers
- Foil packet meals
- Literally any one pot meal you make at home
