Bring the great outdoors indoors! Welcome to our indoor camping party (which could extend to your outdoor backyard weather permitting ;)). Check out our ideas on photo backdrops that double as play areas, party food, activity tables, and games!
DECORATIONS
We decorated our entry way with balloons and welcome signs. We also had a “mosquito” game – if you’re familiar with indoor camping themes, you may have heard of this one – say a few camping words & you get a ‘mosquito’ (red sticker). The person with the least mosquito bites at the end of the party wins! We decided to add a little twist to it and also added the birthday kid’s name 😉 No one came out without a mosquito bite!
Photo backdrops are a great way of setting a theme and double as a nice and easy activity. For this party, we set up a night-time starry scene along with our camping play tent. The area doubled as a play area after everyone was able to take their pictures! (While we did have a plush campfire set, we’ve also created an inexpensive, upcycled campfire for previous dramatic play day which would work well too. Click here to check out instructions on how to create it!)
We decorated our tables with a few Camping Centerpieces and used buckets and trays to serve out the food. We also created some labels and placed those inside mini-buckets with twigs to hold the signs. We picked a few camping themed plates (Camping Plates, Camping Party Beverage Plates) and laid out a few camping centerpieces and figurines around the kid table.
We also set up a Camp Board Game as well as extra games of “go fish” for our parents and grandparents to join in the fun if they wanted to 😉
PARTY FOOD
We had a few typical party food items (hot dogs, kabobs, etc) but also had a few areas where guests could mix, match, and create their own snacks or beverages. The food snacks are especially a fun treat for the kiddos as they can grab some snacks and create their own twist on campfires or lakes 😉
- Hot Chocolate Bar. We weren’t as ambitious to go with hot chocolate from scratch, but we did have a few different flavored pouches along with some cookies, marshmallows, and other things to add in.
- Smores Bar – What’s a camping party without smores? We had a tray laid out with all the smores ingredients!
- Yummy Bugs – We’ve used these cute, little healthy Fruit and Vegetable Bug Snacks from ilovevegan.com a number of times! They’re such a favorite as kiddos can create and design their own ‘bugs’ – the only catch, they have to eat all the ones they create 😉 It’s a great way of getting little ones excited about eating healthily!
- Pretzel Campfires – We set up a larger “campfire” with pretzel rods and peppers but also had some mini bags of pretzel sticks and cheetos for kids to grab and make their own!
- Catch of the Day – We laid out some blue jello cups as well as some packets of mini goldfish.
- Don’t Feed the Bears – This one was simple – just packets of Teddy Grahams
ACTIVITY TABLE
We typically set up an activity table for kids to keep entertained while everyone arrives AND after all the games are done. These activities are simple and easy and typically don’t require too much supervision.
- Camping Sticker Scenes – this is such a fun and easy activity for little ones as they can design their own scene (and tell a
- Dream Catcher Keychains – this one was a bit tricky – the dream catcher portion was a bit difficult. Older children were able to put them together but younger ones may need a bit of help.
- Camp Memory Boxes – this one is super easy and fun as they end up with their own little box (to put their dream catcher in;)). The boxes are already put together so the kiddos just have to add the stickers.
And while we didn’t have these crafts set up at our activity table, you could also add these in for some more budget-friendly, upcycled craft fun:
GAMES
To make things a bit more fun, we set up our games as group “Camping Challenges”. After each “challenge” was complete, we handed out stickers as rewards for each completed challenge (though really, every kid got a reward or two with all these games). Depending on your group, you could raise the stakes and keep score or add a better prize for the winning team (Though, we kept ours fairly competitive free for our younger guest ;))
- Marshmallow Towers – We gave each of the kiddos a few marshmallows and had them stack as many as they could onto a plate (without falling). Whoever got the most standing – for at least 10 seconds – won!
- Fishing – While you could always pick up a magnetic fish game from the Dollar Store or make one your own, we had a “Let’s Go Fishing” Game that was in good condition & usable for the party. We played a few rounds of this one and let the kiddos “add” up all their fish from all the rounds.
- Go-Fish – this one is easy & you can pick up a packet of large cards from the Dollar Tree. If you have a really large group, you can combine a few packets or have a few different games going on and have each winner play each other – tournament style 😉
- Catch the Fireflies – For this game, we handed out some plastic jars (but some upcycled ones would work too). Then we tossed up some yellow pom poms – a few at a time – and had the kids ‘catch’ as many as they could in their jars.
- Build A Tent – This one is quite easy to set up – grab a few twigs, rocks, and other natural items and let the kiddos “build a mini tent”. (OR let the kiddos go on a treasure hunt to find those items in the backyard or a park). The challenge is to build a sturdy tent (at the end we brought out a little stuffed bear who ‘growled’ for effect but didn’t end up taking down the tents 😉
GOODIE BAGS
We kept our goodie bags pretty simple as the kiddos were already going home with some of the crafts they made (log cabin, dream catcher keychain, memory box, and sticker scene. We just added some snacks (pretzel sticks and cheetos for “campfires” and smores snack kits) and candy into a small paper lunch bag. Simple & easy 🙂
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you so much for checking out our party planning article. Hopefully it gave you some great ideas for your next celebration!
If you did enjoy this, please let us know below or follow us on Pinterest. Also, If you haven’t already and are still looking for that perfect party theme, feel free to check out some of our other party ideas: Party Guides and/or other Camping Ideas
Happy Party Planning
