5 Easy Ways to Get Your Kids Interested in Bushcraft – Guest Post by Joe

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Would your kids survive if they got lost in the woods? Bushcraft is a popular term for survival skills used in the wild. Unfortunately, in this digital age, children do not acknowledge the importance of bushcraft, and many kids do not even think about how to survive in the wild. Why would they need skills like making a fire or shelter? Well, these skills are vital for survival.

Getting children involved in outdoor resilience activities is important, and sets them up with life skills that will benefit them for years to come. Here are five easy ways to get your kids interested in bushcraft:

1. Take Them on Survival Campouts

Experience is the best teacher. On a survival campout, kids are required to compromise and work together in teams. Exposure to the outdoors requires bushcraft. Campouts in the backyard or the woods without the usual necessities such as wearing appropriate footwear or preparing a meal over a fire. Necessity is, after all, the mother of invention. You need to put your children into the actual environment that awakens the survivor in them.

During the campout, remember to prohibit the use of any electronic gadgets or equipment to improve their survival. There is no easy way out!

2. Provide Bushcraft-Related Entertainment

The easiest and most effective way to get children interested in bushcraft is by providing entertainment on the subject. Equipping them with books, magazines, games, and films is a suitable approach for providing information on survival skills. The Hunger Games is a fictional book series and Disaster Hero is a computer game; both are perfect examples of entertaining methods that invoke kids’ interest in bushcraft. Not only do they teach specific survival skills, but they also get the children interested in applying what they see and read.

3. Make Bushcraft a Fun Activity

Developing a positive attitude is the first step towards learning survival skills. You can enhance a positive attitude in children by making such activities pleasant. Cooking outdoors, setting traps, or creating a temporary shelter can be made fun by creating competitive games. For example, the kid who starts a fire first gets a prize. These activities are instrumental in changing the attitude of kids towards learning survival skills. Bushcraft does not have to be a scary ordeal. Instead, make it a fun indulgence in the outdoors, and that positive energy will boosts the child’s interest.

4. Give Them Responsibilities

Engage your kids by assigning them tasks that enhance their bushcraft and makes them feel resourceful. Compel them to learn more survival techniques by assigning activities like food preservation, creating a temporary shelter, purifying water, etc. Responsibilities will make the children feel important and will keep them interested in bushcraft.

5. Lead by Example

In most cases, kids identify by what their parents or elders do. Let them see you engaging in bushcraft activities. If you regularly put your skills into action from time to time, then your kids will relate to that. Once you expose your kids to the outdoors, they are likely to learn survival skills, and using those yourself instead of the simpler ways invented by technology is an easy way to get kids interested in them as well.

Bushcraft is basically survival skills that can be acquired through practice. Activities like taking your kids on campouts where they get to rough it in the outdoors provides good practice. Your kids can learn survival techniques and be entertained at the same time. When bushcraft is fun, your kids will gain interest in it, and giving them responsibilities in the outdoors will enhance that interest. Be the example you want them to emulate. Technology has made everything too simple today. Kids are used to getting the easy way out! And while teaching children about life outside can prove challenging, it doesn’t mean that it’s entirely impossible.

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Joe loves spending time in the outdoors. Whenever daily life gets him down, he heads to the nearest lake or river with his kayak and camera, and spends time recharging his batteries. For more no-fluff, to the point reviews that can help you choose the right gear for your next adventure, check out his blog Nature Rated.