Turn life into an Adventure with your kids

Want to introduce more adventure into your kids lives? Well our school holiday camps have just what you need to facilitate more outdoor play, get your kids to use their imagination and to discover more about their surroundings.

Increasing your kid’s exposure to adventure is actually easier than you think and you can even get the whole family involved.

One of the easiest ways to incorporate adventure into our kids lives is to literally create it out of everyday experiences. The next time you are walking to school or to the bus stop, look at the trees growing on your street, learn the history of your local area, tell your kids a story and let them create their own adventure along the way. If you demonstrate curiosity, your children will follow suit. After all, adventure can be found anywhere…

From birth, kids learn new skills pretty rapidly, as well as the confidence to use them. Children need to trust their own capabilities in order to thrive, in addition to how to rebound from failures. As our kids grow older, they need a sense of autonomy and individuality, and exposing your kids to adventure is one of the most fun ways to achieve that.

So, does that mean we need to be doing the things our kids want more often?

Absolutely not. You can make the fun and interesting things you want to do as a parent, become the new normal for your kids. Don’t forget, kids are actually very portable…

If you want to go for a hike, take your kids along, it may take 3 hours to hike 1 kilometre, and you can guarantee that someone is bound to have a meltdown from the farthest point from home. But the more you do it, like anything, the easier it gets and before long, your kids will be bugging you for the next outdoor adventure.

Each trip or outing is not going to be perfect, or even enjoyable for everyone involved. Some days there will be crying and screaming and your kids will run off and not want to participate. Don’t let that stop you! This also happens when you are at home. Just have patience, going on adventure outings with kids can take time, but take a breath and enjoy watching your kids explore their natural curiosities.

Let them try new things

Sometimes it can be pretty hard to watch your kids trying new things, particularly when there is even the slightest chance that they could get hurt or injured. A little tip we like to give when it comes to encouraging your kids to be more adventurous is “think like a lifeguard”. A lifeguard will observe swimmers attentively, but they only intervene when necessary. Allowing kids to explore and play, with limited interference, helps us as parents, to become more of a supportive partner in our children’s play, rather than directive. This will allow them the chance to truly shine. They get more freedom to explore and discover and in turn, we help them to build crucial life skills that will benefit them throughout the rest of their life.

At Adventure Camp, we encourage kids to use their adventurous minds and their imagination to solve problems and think about things like;

1. What’s your plan? – to get across that creek, to build a shelter, to rescue the fallen birds nest
2. Where will you? – jump off, place your feet, hold the rope
3. What can you use? – to rescue your friends who have fallen down a cliff, to build a stretcher or to get across the toxic crossing…

Starting kids on the road to adventurism when they are young means that as they grow, they will seek it out.

If you want more adventure for your kids these school holidays, why not choose Adventure Camp.