Our First Daytime "Mini Camping" Experience!
Over the course of the past year I heard from many parents that they weren't ready to commit to actually camping yet, but they did want their kid to be able to do something camping-adjacent. Sort of like the new trend of "sleep unders" where kiddos do all of the traditional sleepover activities, but go home to their own beds at the end of the night. So we decided to dip our toes in the water and try out a daytime only event to see if it was popular or not. It is safe to say: it WAS popular. Through nothing more than posts in various parenting and/or outdoorsy Facebook groups we had 44 families register for the event!
We couldn't have asked for more gorgeous weather for the "Mini Camping" event. We rented the big picnic shelter at Umstead State Park (Reedy Creek) and set up:
- Playdough with nature bits and bobs
- Mud kitchen with water, cups and scoops, buckets, construction trucks, and plastic animals
- Camping themed coloring sheets
- Piles of outdoorsy picture books and board books
- 3 tents to play in
- A self-serve nature scavenger hunt (with sticker reward!)
- And a guided 1/2 mile hike (with creek play!)
We had TWENTY FIVE families (FAMILIES!!!) join us for the morning session (9:30am-1:00pm) and it was just the right size group for folks to connect with others, kids to find natural playmates, and the space to accomodate everyone. One of the big highlights from the morning session was a really neat collaborative playdough work (pictured) that several children and parents added to.
It was so nice to walk around and chat with families whose kids were all happy to be outside and exploring the activities. The nature playdough tables and the mud kitchen area drew in the most families and it was exciting to see all of the parent and child connections happening over the piles of rocks and buckets of water.
The afternoon session was equally awesome with a slightly smaller crew of 10 families. What was most amazing (to me!) was the fact that we continued to get registrations throughout the morning and daytime for the afternoon session - including a few families that said they had friends attend in the morning and share it with them so they signed up last-minute for the afternoon. How cool!
The hit of the afternoon session was definitely the guided hike and creek playing. Thank you Erin for leading the afternoon hike (and for Paisley leading the morning one which was also very popular)! By the time the afternoon rolled around it was plenty warm enough for some seriously enjoyable splashing.
After both the morning and afternoon hikes, we gathered in the picnic shelter to eat BYO picnic lunches while I read some nature story books to the group. We read: Worm Weather, Hiking Alphabet, Eat Up Bear, In The Forest, and Plants Can't Sit Still. All favorites in my house.
No camping experience would be complete without a campfire, of course. Lots of kids were excited to watch the fire get started and we talked about safety rules of a campfire and how to feed a campfire (sticks = snacks, logs = meals). Kids and adults alike enjoyed roasting marshmallows over the fire before saying goodbyes to head home for naptime or bedtime.
It was very clear to me that this event was filling a big need for parents of young kids! Something semi-structured that allowed for a lot of child choice, longer than a typical hour long class so kids could really get acclimated, casual connections with other families, outdoors in beautiful weather, and with the special camping-related elements like the tents and campfire/marshmallows. We will FOR SURE be hosting more of these all throughout the year. Thank you to everyone who attended the April Mini Camping Experience and we hope to see you (and others) at the next one!
