Fun activity for hiking kids: Nature Bios

"My earliest memory as a twig was when I was just a shoot..."

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 Nature Bios.

Have each child in your hiking group find some object along the trail that they find interesting. It might be a flower, rock, twig, acorn or anything else that can be carried.

Next, have children come up with a “biography” of their found object. For example, of a rock, they might say:

I was born many years ago when after years of rain and wind, and I broke off of a cliffside. Wanting to strike out on my own, I rolled down this hill. Eventually, I came across this trail, where I found other rocks just like me, and here I settled down.

Materials: Object found on trail

Ages: Four and up

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