Day Hiking Trails: Fun activity for kids on day hike: Spider Spotlight

Monday, August 11, 2014

Fun activity for kids on day hike: Spider Spotlight

Photo courtesy of Iowa DNR.

Generally, exploring and discovery is enough for kids, but sometimes even they can grow bored with that and become restless. Remember that they naturally have shorter attention spans than adults.

Fortunately, there are lots of tried and true activities you can do on the trail that’ll keep kids from getting bored. Among them is Spider Spotlight.

For kids who aren’t squeamish around siders, have them observe a web when coming across one of them. Ask them if how the web is structured and how the spider moves about it. Children should not handle spiders, even when coming across a nonvenomous species.

Materials: Spider and its web found in nature

Ages: 10 and up

Learn about more than a hundred other hiking diversions for kids in Hikes with Tykes: Games and Activities.

Meet the Author

My name is Rob Bignell. I'm a long-time hiker, journalist and editor. My son Kieran and I have been hiking together for the past decade. Before Kieran, I taught middle school students in New Mexico and Wisconsin, served as an infantryman in the Army National Guard, and worked in newspapers. I've won several journalism awards, from editorial writing to sports reporting. In 2001, The Prescott Journal, which I served as managing editor of, was named Wisconsin’s Weekly Newspaper of the Year. Currently I own and operate an online editing business, Inventing Reality Editing Service. After spending several years in Southern California, my son and I now live in Wisconsin on the scenic Red Cedar River.