Parents hiking tricks will help you keep your kids motivated and moving on the trail. Here are the top tricks that I use when hiking with my kids.

As I’ve said over and over, hiking with kids is fun and challenging. I beseech you to keep at it and keep hiking with your kids. Over time your whole family will learn to enjoy this special time outdoors together. Sometimes it can become a bit of a drudge on the trail and these tricks will help so that in the end everyone remembers having fun.

Parents Hiking Tricks – Make Your Own Bag Of Tricks

Since all children and families are different I encourage you to develop your own bag of tricks. These are things that you know your kids enjoy or that you know will work to keep your kids having fun on the trail. The following is a list of stuff that we do on the trail.

I will use some of my parents hiking tricks on every hike I go on.  Inevitably at some point during the hike I will reach into my bag of tricks when I can sense something is needed.

Parents Hiking Tricks Or The Parents Bag Of Tricks

Use Treats As Motivation

Sometimes when the kids are feeling a bit tired or grouchy I will pull out some special treat that I’ve brought along and pass out a little bit of it. I like to use something that can be given in small pieces over a long time to spread out the use of the treat.

For example, I may give each kid a few fruit snacks. Then I’ll pass out a few more after another 15 minutes of hiking.

Sing Songs

Singing songs is always a great way to pass time on the trail. These work well if you are on a trail that is not too crowded so you aren’t disturbing others. Also, if there are no other people it is less embarrassing.

Over the years we have sung all of the traditional kids songs, but we’ve also sang the national anthem and take me out to the ball park. Whatever you all enjoy is good.

Here is another post with fun songs to sing on the trail.

Make Up Or Tell Stories

Making up or simply telling stories is another good way to pass the time. You can either just tell old stories about yourselves, such as embarrassing moments from your childhood. Luckily for parents, young kids want to hear all of those old stories and never get tired of them. Savior that because it wont’ last.

Another option is to make up stories. Maybe you have one talented storyteller in your group. Or maybe you can take turns telling a story where each person tells a few lines and then leaves it for the next person to take over.

Play Word Games

Sometimes we will just play some kind of word games. For example a memory game like Johnny has an A in his pocket…and so on.

Or you could try a game where you make up a long, silly sentence where every word has to start with the same letter. For example, An army of angry aardvards ate all apples at Antarctica.

Hide and Seek

Sometimes we will take turns running ahead on the trail and hiding behind a rock or tree. Then when the group catches up you get to jump out and try to scare them. The key here is to not do this in bear country or where the trail is in a dangerous area.

Listening Game

This is not one of the kids favorites and it usually doesn’t last too long. But, sometimes we’ll all be quiet and just see what we can hear for a few minutes of silence. I find it fun to see how silent it can be.

20 Questions

This is the old game where one person thinks of something and the others take turns asking yes or no questions as they try to figure out what it is.

Find Something Or Count Something

Sometimes we will come up with a challenge to see who can be the first one to see something we choose, such as a type of flower or bird nest. Or you can try and count how many mushrooms you see or waterfalls you pass on the trail.