This weekend will be my first "camping" trip of this spring. I had to put camping in quotes because this isn't going to be trekking off into the woods with just my pack for a week, but an Adventure Princess weekend with my middle daughter (age 6). So it will be great 1 on 1 time with her, but instead of being alone in the woods there will be 100 other dads and daughters/sons around. Don't get me wrong it's a GREAT program and I'm thrilled to be part of it, but you do have to put camping in quotes on this one :)
It does afford an opportunity though to teach some prepping skills in a fun non-scary setting. I think any camping trip can be used for the purpose of learning a new skill, and these camps are actually setup to teach some of them quite well. There is a full archery range where she can "play" but of course actually be learning a potentially important skill at the same time. This also sets up for one of my favorite parts, the Daddy Archery Contest. There is a BB gun range which is where my oldest really started to fall in love with shooting....now she always wants to go get range time with my 22. And you can't forget all the hikes, canoe, and horse rides.
She also gets to practice (ok play to her) with some of the gear that could be important to her in the future. Even though we won't need a lot of this gear on this trip, I like to bring my water filters, crank/solar radios, etc. She'll play the game of finding water and we can talk about why you need to clean it and how. I can teach her how to safely use my hatchet to break up the firewood and of course how to actually start a fire. Sadly we'll also learn about first aid, as I'm sure someone will get a minor injury we can treat on the trail.
Of course I get to learn new things too. At the last Princess Campout one of the other dads was showing how to find and identify animal tracks, something I've never really spent much time on.
Truly the best part is getting to spend 3 days with my daughter without all the "normal" distractions. But if we can play a lot of games that happen to make her better prepared...well that's a win-win in my book (sorry for the cliché)
Make sure that you're preparing your children in age appropriate ways for whatever it is you may be preparing for...and try to make it fun so they want to keep doing it. Hope everyone has a great weekend!
