Super Fun Hiking Games To Play With Kids

Hi, I am Camilla Ross. I am the mama of 3 kids, all 3 years and younger and I love to hike. Not really the easiest combination right there. Hiking can be tough doing it solo, but add 3 kids into the mix and it sounds pretty impossible! Yet, that is exactly what hiking has taught me, that I can do the impossible! So I am here to tell you right now that hiking with kids is possible, hard but possible! Not only possible though; hiking with kids can actually be fun!

Why should I even try?

I know, sometimes even the thought of getting kids into a car is daunting enough. The thought of going through the 20 minute process of getting everyone in the car, driving to a trail location, and then tackling all the gear, kids, and drama of going on a hike sounds like a complete disaster. So why even try?

First ask yourself why do you even want to hike? Is it because you want some exercise? Do you want to see something amazing? Are you bored and just want something to do? Everything you get out of hiking your kids will get too, but they will also get so much more than that. Kids that grow up climbing trees, chasing butterflies, racing up a trail, and playing in a creek will empower them to the be the best that they can be in life. Hiking will help them realize how truly incredible they really are. Here is a just a taste of all the things they will get from hiking.

These are things I have seen develop in my own kids since I have taken them hiking:

How the heck do you do it!?

Alright so now you are motivated to get those kids on the trail the question is now what do you do! Don’t worry mama, I got your back. Click for a complete guide of tips and tricks to get your kiddos to hike. My top 5 pieces of advice for hiking with kids are:

1. SNACKS!! It is amazing what a child will do when they know food is involved!
2. Know your limits! Know how far your kids can go and plan accordingly! If you push your kids to hard, they will hate hiking, and you eventually will too.
3. Be excited! If you are not excited and happy to be hiking, your kids won’t either. If mama ain’t happy ain’t nobody happy!
4. Let them be kids! Remember that they are kids and let them explore and use their imaginations. Let them jump off a rock or climb a tree. It may take longer, but they will LOVE hiking if you let them hike their way.
5. PLAY GAMES!!! Keep their minds off of the fact that they have a whole mile left to go or that they are tired and hungry! Interact with them and enjoy the moment!

Let the games begin!

1. On Your Mark Get Set, GO!

Let’s say you are out on a the trail and your little ones are starting to lag. You are nearing the home stretch, but they are running out of motivation! Time to heat things up a bit and get a competition going. Nothing motivates a kid like a challenge! Line those kiddos up and say, “On your mark. Get set. GO!” At go take off running and see I guarantee your little ones will run to catch you and beat you. Key is to not have a finish line! Let them run for as long as they want, cause if they think they have finished they won’t go any further! Once you catch up with them ask for a rematch and repeat the game!

2. Look For….

Before I go on a hike, usually I read up about it a little. I read about it to make sure I know what to expect and what to be aware of. It is always smart to know what wildlife you may encounter and what the elevation and temperature changes will be. Because of my pre-hike research, usually I have an idea of some of the things we will see on the trail. So on the drive to our trailhead I tell my kids what we are going to see or what we could see.

For instance, San Angelo, Texas is home to quite a bit of deer, so throughout the hike we talk about deer and I give my kids each the assignment to find deer. We then channel our inner Indian tracker spirit and look for clues. Throughout the hike my kids would point out deer hoofprints and deer scat. They would completely flip every time they saw a deer because they felt like they had tracked it down! Education and fun all warped up into one fun game!

3. Spiderman Tricks

People hike to see the beauty of nature. Along your trail there will be giant rocks, tall trees, thick branches, steep boulders, downed logs, creek beds, etc. In a child’s eyes this is like a gigantic natural playground! So harness your inner ninja warrior and have a spiderman trick competition. Jump off boulders, climb a tree, leap over a creek, cartwheel through a meadow! I don’t think I have ever met a kid that did not like an adult oohing and awing over their tricks.

4. Tell Stories About The Animals

My 3 year old daughter absolutely loves animals. Before we go on hikes I always tell her what kind of animals we might see on the trail. As we are hiking she gets so excited to see the animals we had talked about, that she wants to run and pet them or feed them. Obviously that doesn’t work out in her favor as they are wild animals. This then leads to tears that the deer ran away before she could feed it or the lizard hide under a rock before she could hold it.

Due to these emotional breakdowns she would have we started telling stories about the animals we would find. Now whenever she sees a lizard skitter across her path, we take turns making up a story about the lizard running home to take care of his 5 children and feed them dinner. It is so fun to make up stories and I love hearing her imagination at work!

5. Snowman

I grew up hiking and I remember sometimes, my siblings and I, would start to get a little too far ahead of my parents. So to get us to slow down or stop they would yell, “SNOWMAN!” Whenever they would say this word, we all would freeze in whatever position we were in as if we were a snowman. We would have to stay that way until my parents would say go. I loved playing this game as a kid, cause you never knew when someone was going to yell snowman. It can get pretty funny too!

6. I Spy

Nothing like a game of good old fashioned, I Spy. If you never played this as a child than were you ever really a kid? As you are hiking look for something and describe it. For instance, “I spy something brown.” Have your kids look around and name off things they see that are brown, until they guess the right object. The one who guesses the correct object than gets to pick the next object for people to guess. Not gonna lie we never play this game without quoting Brother Bears tree quote!

7. First One There Gets A….

If you read my top 5 pieces of advice for hiking with kids than you know I am a huge fan of bribery on a hike! Who said bribing your kids was bad? Through out the hike I give little rewards to my kids. For instance, the first one to the tree gets to sit on the bench, or the first one to see the arch gets a sucker, or the first one to the van at the end of the hike gets to an extra topping on their ice cream.

8. Singing Time

I will let you in on a little fun fact about me; I love to sing, but I am an awful singer! No joke! Its fine though, my awful voice never stops me from belting out songs at the top of my lungs! I think I developed my love for music and singing from my mother who always had music playing. All growing we always had music playing, so naturally when we were out in nature we would make our own music. We would sing the entire hike together as a family, normally ironic and hiking appropriate songs like; Climb Every Mountain, Almost There, and Just Around The Riverbend.

At the age group that my little ones are at now our songs mostly consist of primary songs and nursery rhymes. Lets just say if you are out on a mountain and you here a weird family barking, howling, neighing, and meowing….yea that’s just us jamming out to our own version of Old McDonald. Singing is a great way to keep your kiddos distracted and focused on the words and actions to the songs you are singing. Plus it’s a very fun way to bond with your kids!

9. Animal Bets

Okay another fun fact about me, I am and always will be a huge animal lover! Whenever we go on hikes I research the wildlife in the area beforehand with hopes of seeing them. I know weird huh? Then I would spend the entire time hiking looking around hoping to see a chipmunk or a black bear or a bighorn sheep.

I realized that I rarely got to see the animals I was hoping to see and so I started offering money to my siblings, mainly my oldest sister, to whoever could find the animal I wanted to see.

Of course as a kid I pretty much just had coins, so the payments weren’t usually more that 75 cents, but it was still fun. I would name the prices before the hike and pay up when we would get home. Just a fun way to motivate your kids to really look at nature!

10. Follow The Leader

We’re following the leader the leader the leader! We’re following the leader wherever he may go! – Lost Boys(Peter Pan) Pick a leader and follow their every move. They jump off a rock, you jump off a rock. If they do a cartwheel in a field of flowers, you breakout your gymnastic skills and follow through! This is a toddler favorite! They will go all out and will love that they are the leader of your little adventure.

11. Who Can Find The Biggest?

If you can’t tell by now, games that involve finding things on the trail are a big deal when hiking with kids. Trying to find something in particular helps kids concentrate on hikes. It also motivates them to be in the front and to really observe nature, so that they can find what they are looking for. Another one of our favorite search and find games is who can find the biggest? The biggest saguaro cactus! Or the biggest arch! The biggest mountain goat! Pick something that you see a lot of on your trail and see who can find the biggest one of them all!

12. Would You Rather?

This game is literally just asking the same question over and over again in slightly different forms. Would you rather? While hiking pick 2 different things and ask would you rather this or that. Example: Would you rather sleep in a tree or in a cave? Would you rather have the superpower of flight or mindreading? Would you rather lose your pinky finger or your thumb? Just a simple, yet funny way to pass the time on a hike.

13. Find Your Home

Another game I used to play a lot when I was a kid hiking, was to find my home. Growing up I lived mostly on the east coast and so hikes in those areas normally have a lot of trees, logs, caves, and hills. While we were hiking we would pretend we had to live in the wild and so on the trail we would pick where we would sleep. Sometimes we would get so into it that we would plan where our dog would sleep, where our bathroom would be, and that kind of stuff. It really makes you look deeply into nature and expands your child’s imagination!

14. Water Fight

One of the hikes I took my kids on was in Arches National Park and it was so hot! My kids and I all had super red faces just from being hot! I was trying to motivate my kids to keep hiking, despite the heat, and so we began to have a water fight. With the water bottles we brought we tried to see whole could hike fast enough to not get soaked by mom! My kids thought this game was hilarious and it helped cool them off too. Lets just say they beat me to the car, because they were booking it so fast. So hide a water gun in your hiking backpack and let the war begin!

15. Hide and Freak

You have heard of hide and seek right? Well lets take it a step further and play hide a freak! My husband loves to take a kid and run ahead of us to find a place to hide. Obviously, we are trying to find him, but he is trying to scare us. It just adds more thrill to the game knowing that if you don’t find him, he will jump out an scare you!

16. BINGO!

This game is one that needs to be prepped pre-hike, but is super fun! Before going on the hike make a list of about 24 things you might see on the hike, for instance when hiking in San Angelo, Texas you could put rattlesnake, mesquite tree, deer hoofprint, prickly pear on a cactus, or someone riding a horse!

After you have picked your 24 items make a chart of 5 rows with 5 items in each row. (Make sure you include a free space!) Repeat this process on another chart, but make sure you rearrange your items. Make a card for each person and then give them a pen/pencil. Throughout the hike whenever they find an item on their chart they can mark their item off. If they get 5 in a row they can have a prize at the end!

17. Zombies

My toddlers absolutely love being chased. Unfortunately they usually have way more energy than I have and so when I am hiking I do not have the energy to chase them the entire way. So instead of running after them I go all undead on them. They have to keep ahead of me on the hike when I act like a zombie or they will become a zombie too. If I touch them they become a zombie and have to act like one too and try to get their sibling.

So I have to just drag my leg, groan “brains!,” and hold up my arms, putting forth a minimum amount of effort in this game of tag. Yet I still get the results of getting my kids to run and hike instead of drag their feet and complain.

18. Lava

If you never played the floor is lava as a kid, then were you ever really a child? To play this game just yell the floor is lava and everyone has to immediately get off the ground and onto something higher. Jump on the nearest rock or up a tree, point is it get off the ground. If you do not jump to a spot off the ground you are ‘dead.’ This game is actually super funny to watch where people jump to get off the ground.

19. The Alphabet

How about some I Spy with a little more of a challenge. Start with the letter A and find something on the hike that starts with the letter A. Examples: apple, ant, animal, etc. Once you find your A move to letter B. Keep your eyes peeled for a bee, a boulder, a branch, anything that starts with a B. After B is C and so on all the way to Z. The first one to Z is the winner! Great way to help those young ones learn their letters!

20. Encore!

One of my favorite hiking activities is singing! I may sound like a donkey with a thorn in his flank, but I sure love to sing anyway! Singing is great for your lungs while hiking, it keeps your mind occupied, and it keeps the more dangerous animals away. So let’s play a game with singing!

Encore is an actual card game that you can buy, but obviously it isn’t something that you want to bring with you when you are hiking. So here is how to play while hiking, without the cards.

1. Pick a word. Literally ANY word. You could use the word barber, so, let, fun, star! Just pick a word.
2. Now brainstorm different songs that have the word that you picked in it.
3. You have to sing the verse of the song with the word. Then it is the other persons turn. They sing a different song that they thought of with that same word. So it goes back and forth between the 2 of you or the 2 teams until you are the last team to think of a song with that word in it.

Example: The word is know.

Songs that have the word know in it.

• (Let it Go) Well now they know! Let it go!
• (What Makes You Beautiful) You don’t know your beautiful, that’s what makes you beautiful
• (Muffin Man) Do you know the muffin man? The muffin man, the muffin man.
• (Somebody That I Used To Know) Now your just somebody that I used to know.

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