Game/activity for hiking kids: Finding a Toy

A stick is perhaps the greatest toy ever.
Photo courtesy of Photoree.

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 Finding a Toy

Ask the children with you on a hike to imagine that they are Stone Age kids in which there are no toy stores or manufactured toys. Tell them there are toys in nature, however, and have they find them. Among the objects they might select are a stick, a rock, a branch with smaller branches and leaves, acorns, etc.

Next, ask the children how the various found objects might be played with. For example, sticks can become swords, fishing poles, digging tools, and so on. Acrons can be used as tops. Branches with leaves can become brooms or the sides to a playhouse. Praise them for their creativity.
For the last step, let them play with their found objects as they imagined (so long as the play is safe, of course!).

Materials: Objects found in nature

Ages: 4 and up

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