The best and most fun summer camp activities for kids are back with the heat and the summer season. It is an ideal time to get out of the big cities and enjoy all the activities offered for kids in nature, the beach or in the suburbs.
School is out and parents are faced with a big problem, “what do we do with the kids while we are working?
We can enjoy them with ideas from these compilations of activities for kids if we are lucky enough to have the time.
In this way, children can disconnect and spend their days doing very original summer camp activities. They are intense days, with exercises and games that help young people to develop as people, to take their first ‘adult steps’, and even to learn languages, always supervised by professionals.
In fact, there are all kinds of summer camp activities for children, although here we will only highlight 20, the ones we consider the most fun:
- Water activities
There is no better way to beat the heat than with water. Games in the pool, swimming championships or canoeing and sailing, are the most refreshing activities that usually take place among the summer camp activities for children.
The little ones are immersed in beautiful landscapes where cars and buses do not thunder and where they can enjoy nature in total freedom.
- Walking tours and excursions
In most summer camps, youngsters have the opportunity to get to know totally different environments. Many of these summer camp activities for children consist of hiking in the mountains, rivers, canyons, natural pools….
In addition, some of these excursions are aimed at reaching a nearby traditional village, to enjoy the visit of its gastronomy, architecture or history.
- Sport activities
Sport, nature, health and fun, for children, a perfect symbiosis. The huge meadows are not wasted in summer camp activities for children. Volleyball, soccer, basketball or field hockey competitions are classics, but there are also more original activities such as aerobics, archery or fencing with foam sabers.
Many of the activities that children learn at these camps include sports that they would find difficult to do during the year, which helps them to foster collaboration and teamwork. In a summer camp, competitions are not about “winning” but about fun and camaraderie.
- Learn languages
Languages are one of the biggest headaches for parents and, for this reason, many of them try to take advantage of these months to reinforce their children in this aspect, taking advantage of the playful nature of summer camps in English.
- Tyrolean traverse and climbing
Children love climbing trees, swinging and jumping from one branch to another.
Multi-adventure circuits with zip lines are one of the most original and fun summer camp activities for children offered in some multi-adventure summer camps.
- Horseback riding
One of the favorite summer camp activities for kids is horseback riding. On their backs, children can go on small and safe group rides.
In addition, this experience helps them lose their fear of animals and learn a new sport while enjoying the outdoors, an unforgettable experience!
- The night of the stars
Some special activities that usually take place in the camps are bivouac (sleeping outdoors) or survival.
For these nights, the monitors and the children take their sleeping bag and mat and enjoy one of the most special and unforgettable experiences of the camp: sleeping under a blanket of stars and outdoors in the middle of nature. If we have a telescope it would be amazing but we can also make an astro.
- Cooking and gastronomy workshops
Boys and girls love to learn new things. A cooking workshop is, from what we have experienced, one of the summer camp activities for kids in which the little ones get involved and have a lot of fun.
With the culinary activities, the youngsters take their first culinary steps and learn to eat healthy food.
- Gymkhanas and open-air dances.
This is another of the activities present in every summer camp. Boys and girls are divided into groups to overcome different tests distributed throughout the camp. The youngsters bring out their cunning and compete with their peers amidst laughter, races, tests and disguises.
10.- Tracing and clue games:
In groups, they try to find someone hidden in the camp, a place or an object. With a map and following a marked route or looking for clues that lead to others until the final objective is found.
- Summer camp activities about the environment and recycling.
We all want our children to understand how important it is to take care of the planet. Therefore, some of the summer camp activities for children that we find most interesting are those that have to do with contact with nature and animals (goats, cows, sheep, horses, etc.), awareness of the planet’s resources (recycling courses, among others) or natural food processing.
- Parties and theme nights
From Hawaiian, Egyptian, Ibizan to sixties parties. These are festive and atmospheric nights in which young people will have to build their own costumes, create choreographies in groups and play roles or characters, all accompanied by special dinners and music. It is one of their favorite activities.
- A day at the farm
Gawking. This is how the children are left after observing how a cow is milked or how cheese is prepared by hand.
- Contests of all kinds
Every day at a camp is a new adventure, and one of the most fun ones consists of holding contests of all kinds: photography, video, dances, multi-tests, cooking, etc.
Practically any game can be adapted as a test and turned into a fun activity.
- Music workshops
Having fun playing instruments is another of the star summer camp activities for kids. Personalized and sometimes disastrous concerts help children to escape from shyness and, in some cases, even discover new talents.
- Recreational activities
Many camps offer a variety of recreational activities such as swimming pool, arts and crafts, movies, picnics, etc.
These activities are more dependent on the camp facilities and should be discussed with the camp center before enrolling children.
- Maritime activities
Have you thought about enrolling your child in a nautical camp? They can do great sports activities such as beach volleyball, beach soccer, surfing, canoeing, sailing, snorkeling or windsurfing in sports facilities or on the beach, with a 24-hour organization, which can include excursions to coastal towns, ports or islands (by boat).
- Evenings at night
Leaving perhaps the most classic for last, we cannot forget the traditional camp nights or evening evenings, in which monitors and children enjoy an open sky full of stars, while singing typical camp songs.
19.- Crafts, workshops and handicrafts.
Above all, the multitude of crafts for children with all kinds of materials allows a great variety of options. Many hobbies are discovering sewing rag dolls, with origami, with materials that we usually discard. In this article we publish a great compilation of crafts for children that can be done at home or indoors.
It goes without saying that we can experiment with science. It is downright fun to perform easy homemade experiments for kids.
- Friendship and coexistence at camp.
This is not an activity in itself, although in the long run it is the most rewarding of the above. In summer camps, children can find friends for life.
In this way, they begin to forge their first friendships outside of school, which helps them grow and develop as people. They develop their self-confidence, emotional intelligence and security for tomorrow.
In addition, living together makes emotions much more intense than at school or in any other activity that takes place in their normal environment. The fact of being part of a group in a “world apart” for a period of time favors relationships.