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Five Tried-And-True Outdoor Activities To Get Kids to Absolutely Love Hiking

Our collection of outdoor activities, nature experiments, treasure hunts, and creative ideas to get your kids looking forward to your next family hiking trip! 

If you are an active family, like us, who enjoys regular hiking adventures, getting your kids interested in outdoor family time is probably your top priority. It is proven that the best way for kids, especially toddlers, to learn about nature and the world around us: is through outdoor activities and play. Making hiking fun and safe experience is what this post and our other resources for parents will help you with. In this post, check out our list of suggested nature activities that will get your kids absolutely love hiking. Nature treasure hunts, observation activities, hands-on experiments, creative ideas, and crafts – all to encourage learning in the most eco-friendly manner.   

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Quick Links:

1. Outdoor Treasure Hunts
2. Exploring Nature Book
3. The Photographer Activity
4. Nature Discovery Collection
5. Painted Rocks Activity
6. BONUS: Hiking Safety

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Activity 01 – Outdoor Treasure Hunts

One of the best ways to get kids, especially toddlers, to like hiking is to make a game out of it! And what is a better nature activity for kids than a good old Treasure Hunt?

Our son Cosmos being a curious 4yo toddler is definitely enjoying finding flowers and butterflies. Therefore we have created our own Outdoor Treasure Hunt kit. 

Through this fun nature treasure hunt activity, toddlers are learning all about their surroundings. Kids develop observation skills, learn to point, name, and describe nature objects. This way hiking with kids becomes a fun engaging game! 

You can get our full version of 7 cool kids nature treasure hunt activities for FREE!!!

A set of printable kids nature activity sheets for engaging Outdoor Treasure Hunts includes 7 different scavenger hunts:

• Things to Find in the Forest
• Things to Find at the Lake
• Things to Find on the Street
• Things to Find in the Park
• Things to Find in the Winter
• Things to Find at the Airport
• Things to Find at the Beach

This outdoor treasure hunt nature activity is best for kids ages 3-6yo.

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Activity 02 – Exploring Nature Book

If your kids are a bite older – ages 5-12 – try out this cool activity book – Exploring Nature by Kim Andrews. Frankly, it can be used for younger kids as well, with support from the parents. Our son Cosmos started enjoying the listed outdoor projects when he was only a 4 yo toddler!

Exploring Nature kids activity book is an amazing guide to exploring the great outdoors. It encourages young explorers and nature lovers to get outside and track, explore, discover, and create. 

There are over 50 fun outdoor activities and nature projects that inspire a lifetime of curiosity. All projects develop guided, interactive ideas that let kids observe animals, plants, and even weather and outer space.

You’ll find hands-on educational nature activities for everyone and everywhere: like crafting bird feeders out of fruit, pressing flowers, or creating sundials. There are outdoor activities for every season too!

When you are venturing out on your next hike, do a bit of prep and take the Exploring Nature Book with you. Your kids will get their hands dirty and their imaginations revving while staying active outside. By stopping to notice and record what’s going on around them, kids will practice important skills like observation, memory, writing, drawing, wildlife safety, and more. By the way, you’ll find some nature treasure hunt experiments in this book too!

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Activity 03 – The Photographer!

This outdoor activity is simple: give your child a camera! 

During our weekly family hiking trips, my husband is constantly running around with his camera taking photos while I switch between posing for photos and flying my aerial drone. Over the summer, as Cosmos transitioned from toddler to a young child, we noticed he started to get bored very quickly. 

Of course, he wanted to participate! Yet our son did not have the tools… not until I decided to give Cosmos my old iPhone on our road trip to Sooke, BC. That is when all the fun started!

How to prepare the phone to give to your toddler to use as camera: 

• Get your old phone (I used my old iPhone 6);
• Remove your personal profile and data, reset it to standard settings;
• Remove the sim card;
• Removed all the apps from the main screen, other than the camera, photos, weather, and compass. Some of the system apps you can’t remove, so I hid them a few screens back at a group “pocket”;
• Get a heavy-duty waterproof protective iPhone case;
• Attach one of those GPS tracking devices to the phone so it is harder for your child to lose it! 

Surprisingly it took very little time to teach a 4yo toddler to operate a phone camera. And then magic happened! Cosmos felt super-special now that he can participate in all family outdoor activities: while we were taking photos of him, our toddler was taking photos of us, of flowers and leaves, of trees, of ants and butterflies! 

So we have started creating little challenges for him – little nature treasure hunt activities. 

This way, for example, on our hike to McKee peak in Abbotsford, BC, Cosmos was tasked to “bring home” a collection of 15 different flowers. The fact that he could now use his camera to “collect the species” instead of physically ripping a flower or a leaf off the tree goes perfectly with the Leave No Trace Principles that we propagate. It is good Karma!

Photographer Outdoor Activity Success

Once Cosmos got a taste of taking photos and making little videos, he became unstoppable! Our son was eager to go hiking any time we suggested it, he made sure to carry his camera phone with him on every trip. 

Check out these two photos that our 4yo Cosmos took at the Hunter Trail hike in Mission BC, only a few weeks after he learned how to operate the phone!

We have even combined our Outdoor Treasure Hunt activity with this Photographer activity. This way, kids need to take a photo of every item that is listed on the Nature Treasure Hunt printable sheets, in addition to checking it off. 

Giving our toddler a camera has proven to be a tried-and-true method to get him to absolutely love hiking and the Great Outdoors! 

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Activity 04 – Nature Discovery Collection

Now that we have figured out a way to explore nature without hurting it – through the use of a camera to collect specimens during our outdoor exploration activities instead of physically bringing flowers and shells home, what would be the best way to organize our collection?

Most naturalist books for kids that we have found on the market have limited pages and limited space to store drawings, photos, descriptions… Yet the findings we take home from each of our hiking trips are many. 

It is also hard to work with most of them as there are very limited options to organize, and to fix mistakes made or get rid of failed sketches.

The use of a 3-ring binder to catalogue our outdoor treasure hunt findings seemed like a great option for us! 

We have created the Nature Discovery Collection of printable sheets for our 3-ring binder projects.  Kids can use these sheets to attach photos and drawings of plants, animals, insects, rocks, and their notes. 

There are 21 unique design templates (double-sided) within our package. You can print as many as you need! Kids can mix-and-match pages, and even exchange page-inserts between binders and among friends. Wow, that’s so cool!

There is ample space to note detailed observations and descriptions just “the way real scientists do it”. Parents can help younger kids to look up Latin names of plants and animals, and explain why Latin names are used to this day. 

Nature Discovery Collection is a perfect outdoor activity for kids aged 4-16yo. Children learn to discover, catalog, take photos, draw sketches, make press-preserved plants, create collections.

You can also get our Nature Discovery Collection workbook on Amazon.com, as a printed kit.

Also check out:
60++ Absolutely Hilarious Homeschool Memes, Jokes & Cartoons for Moms

our entire collection of family fun is HERE

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Activity 05 – Painted Rocks

Have you ever wondered why people are leaving painted pebbles and painted rocks along hiking trails, within parks, and sometimes in public places? Have you yet found one? Or have you painted your own rocks with your kids?

The Rocks of Kindness, as this kids' outdoor activity is officially called, is a long story. We have created a little video to tell you all about it, and to give you a few tips on how you and your family can participate! 

Stone painting, rock colouring and pebble decorating are definitely some of the most fun activities for toddlers you can engage in when outdoors.  Kids are prompted to explore their creativity, learn arts and crafts. 

Stone Painting Designs & Tools

Stone Painting for Kids: Designs to Spark Your Creativity by popular stone artist F. Sehnaz Bac gives step-by-step instructions for simple rock-coloring projects, explains how to find and choose stones, which kinds of materials and tools are safe for kids to use, how to set up a “workspace”, simple techniques, and gives many other helpful tips.

You’ll find a great variety of patterns: shapes and designs for human figures and faces, animals, numbers and letters, flowers, trees, stars and more. 

What I love about this book is that kids do not just stop at rock-painting for the outdoor treasure hunt activity here. There are more creative ideas, for example, painting stones for games such as tic-tac-toe, chess, and dominoes. Kids will learn lettering techniques for writing names and words on pebbles and how to design holiday-themed decorations. They'll also discover how to assemble multiple stones for picture-making and story-telling.

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Going back now to the nature treasure hunts we started with, here is an idea for your next hiking trip with kids:

If your hike is going to be to-and-back, hide painted rocks along the way, and let your kids find as many as they can on your way back. 

Or, even better, bring rocks in a few colours. You’ll be hiding blue pebbles on your way up, while your kids will be hiding orange rocks. Switch on your way down: you’ll be treasure hunting the orange ones, while your kids – the blues! 

There is no limit to imagination when your family is determined to have fun outdoors! Your kids will for-sure be looking forward to your next hiking trip!

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BONUS – Hiking Safety

Safety is not actually an activity, but a sure way to either make hiking loved or hated by your little ones. 

Think of it this way: if you were a child and went on a hike, and something happened to you… would you ever go again? I know some kids who dread exploring the outdoors for silly reasons like, for example, they got scared on a trail by an unleashed dog, or they fell and hurt themselves, or they got off the trail and got lost for 10 min… but if something more serious happened? I would never ever go outside for sure!

Providing a safe outdoor environment for kids to explore in a responsible manner is every parent’s responsibility. Hence it is our duty to know the risks and dangers of hiking with kids, and are prepared for the unexpected. 

Check out our recent post Hiking With Kids: 12 Simple Safety Rules Every Parent Should Follow and other kids' resources on our blog, and learn simple rules that help you stay safe adventuring and hiking with your kids. Avoid horror stories, create good memories, and have much fun learning, exploring, and engaging kids in outdoor activities and nature treasure hunts.

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Same Tips and Outdoor Activities on our YouTube Channel:

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We wouldn't have this blog if we didn't have our own online store with homeschooling resources, would we? Check out PerfectDayToPlay online store where you'll find many resources and printables to support learning on the topics of travel, outdoors, and environment:

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• Homeschooling Resources for Families Who Love Travel and Flexibility
• Smart Eco-Friendly Family Activities: Teach Kids Sustainability Practices
• Top Children’s Books On Environment: Teach Kids to Reduce, Reuse & Recycle

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Stay happy, healthy and have fun!

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Enjoy!

Cheerfully yours,

Alexandra, Alex & Cosmos

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