11 Games and Activities for Kids on a Hike
Boost your hiking experience with these games and activities for kids on a hike! Keep them entertained and happy when things get tough and make memories that will last a life time.
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We had to get creative when we were doing out 31-Day Hiking Challenge so that the kids didn’t get bored! See all of our favorite ways to entertain below!
Nature Journaling
One of our favorite activities for kids on a hike is nature journaling! We love to bring notebooks and crayons and colored pencils and find a quiet place to sit and nature journal. We will draw the landscape scenery or specific plants or animals we see along the way. Another great way to use the notebooks is to do leaf rubbings or bark rubbings when we find interesting plants!
Magnifying Lenses
Another favorite activity to entertain kids on a hike is to bring magnifying lenses (one per kid is always best ha!) and explore the things we find. The options are endless when we go hiking! We love these because they are shatterproof and scratch resistant.
Scavenger Hunts
Kids always love a great scavenger hunt – it’s the perfect game and activity for kids on a hike! You can find lots of different types on Pinterest. But make sure to grab my Nature Walk Scavenger Hunt in the VIP section for your next hike! We print them out and use clipboards to bring them with us. You can also laminate them and use dry erase markers to reduce waste.
If you are looking for tips on all of the things you need when hiking with kids, check out our gear list here.
Collection Bags
Depending on where we are hiking we love to collect fallen leaves and twigs, seed pods, nuts, weeds, flowers, bark, etc. We bring paper lunch sacks or sandwich bags. One home we can examine our findings or turn them into art! Please check local regulations before collecting anything from your hike.
Binoculars
On hikes with a view, it’s super fun to bring binoculars! They are so novel to kids and a fun way to engage them with the scenery around them! Take it a step further and play “I spy” with the binoculars or simply ask your kids to describe what they see to you as they use them!
Engage All The Senses
Another great way to help the time pass and make hiking fun for your kids is to use their senses! We love to challenge our kids to find something that feels bumpy or something that smells good (or bad!). Other questions could be things like identifying different sounds, finding things that are smooth, sticky, sharp or cold. The possibilities are endless!
We also will take a minute during a water break to close our eyes and listen and then talk about all the things we could hear!
Bring Books on Local Vegetation and Animals
I recently read something in a Wild + Free bundle written by Katrien Van Deuren that said, “Our little ones look at the world, wide eyed and open-minded, and what they see is an infinite network of puzzles and clues … In fact, children live in an almost perpetual state of wonder. It is their privilege. It is their strength.”
This quote really struck me because it is so true! Sometimes I get frustrated with the endless questions but that sense of curiosity and wonderment are totally the strength and privilege of our children and I am here to try to embrace it!
Bringing guidebooks about the area we are hiking, allows the kids and I to look up answers to our questions. It’s a very educational and bonding experience to search for the answers and clues together!
Compass and Trail Maps
My kids love grabbing trail maps at the beginning of hikes. Even if we’ve done the hike before or it’s something easy like a closed loop! They just love looking at the pictures, reading about the terrain and trying to find where we are on the map.
I love to encourage them to study the map and let them use the compass app on my phone to try to orient themselves. You can even ty letting your kids navigate for a while using the compass and map. Just make sure you know the way back to the car!
Hammocks
This is something new we have gotten into lately! We got two nylon camping hammocks. You can set them up anywhere, as long as you have two trees, posts or poles to tie them too! They are very lightweight and compact and come with two strong ropes and carabiners to set up. It’s so easy to set up, I can do it with a baby strapped to my front! Here are the ones we love!
We love to bring them on long and short hikes to take a break, have snacks, read a book or just enjoy the sounds of nature!
Give Your Kids the Camera
Another activity that is really popular with my kids is when we let them take our phones and take photos. They love feeling grown up and we love to see what their little artistic eyes capture!
Play the Rainbow Game
This is a super fun way to pass time with hiking. We go through the colors of the rainbow and try to find things in nature that are each of those colors! On a recent hike I took pictures of the various finds and compiled them together into a collage. We saw orange leaves, red berries, a blue Stellar’s Jay (Bluejay’s darker blue cousin), green pine needles, lots of differently colored flowers and more!
I would love to see all of the things you do on your hikes! Tag @exploringthroughlife on Instagram or use the #amonthoffamilyhikes tag!
