Telling your teen to ‘go take a hike’ isn’t necessarily a bad thing – when you’re talking about walking outdoors! Use these ideas for fun teen hikes for groups of teens at camps, as a teen party idea or even if you have just a few teens to entertain outside.
1. Make a Nature Sculpture Hike
This teen hike idea has everything a teen enjoys: gum, social time with friends and just enough grossness to make the activity interesting.
You’ll need these supplies:
Each teen will need lots of gum and a jar lid or piece of cardboard for sculpture base. You will also need a can of metallic spray paint.
How to organize the teen hike:
Go hiking on any trail where it is okay to pick up pieces of nature and use them. As teens hike along the trail they find things that they want to use in their sculpture. When they find something, they break off a piece of chewed gum and attach the piece of nature, like a leaf, to their sculpture base. When all of the teens are happy with their sculptures and feel they are complete, come back from your hike and spray paint the sculptures with metallic paint to make them all shiny.
Note for kids with braces: Use hard candy to eat and glue dots for the sculpture.
2. Blind Hike
This hike is a great activity if you want to teach your group of teens about trust.
You’ll need these supplies:
You will need a blindfold for half of your teens.
How to organize the teen hike:
Pair the teens off into partners. Explain to the group that one of the partners will wear the blindfold and the other will walk them along the trail, helping the blindfolded teen get to the end but they cannot talk. They can use motion, direct the blindfolded partner by holding their hands and grunt, but no talking. Not only will the teen who is blinded have to trust the one who can see, but the one who can see will have to trust that the blinded teen will understand their instructions. When they are done, have the partners switch to give the other teen a turn at being blind.
3. Nature’s Texture Artwork Hike
There are textures in nature everywhere. Wait until you see the beautiful artwork teens can make using nature’s textures.
You’ll need these supplies:
Give each teen white printer paper and crayons that have been stripped of their wrapper.
How to organize the teen hike:
As teens hike along, have them cover their paper by doing rubbings on interesting textures they find along the hike. They can use however many colors they wish and place as many textures on one piece of paper as they wish.
After you return from the hike, have the teens trim their artwork about one half of an inch on each side and then mount on colored construction paper. Display their nature’s texture artwork.
4. Glowing Eyes Night Hike
Spooky nighttime flashlight hike that teens enjoy almost as much as they enjoy all of the stories they have to tell the next day.
You’ll need these supplies:
Purchase circular reflectors with stakes and black electrical tape. Place the tape on the reflectors so that the reflector shows through in the form of the slit of an evil eye. Stake these reflectors throughout the trail that the teens will be hiking.
How to organize the teen hike:
Have the teens hike the trail with their flashlights and count how many glowing eyeballs they see. Or, deny you see any glowing eyeballs at all and ask the group if they feel like someone is watching them.
5. Singing in the Rain Hike
A summer rain storm is the perfect time to take camping teens for a hike to help beat the heat. Add a song for even more fun.
How to organize the teen hike:
Often when camping in the summer, it gets very hot and there can be few ways to cool off. Taking a hike in the rain is a blessing at these times. This is also a time to act silly, so silly songs are appropriate. The lyrics to Singing in the Rain can be found here.
Note: Girls should be made aware that clothing can become see-through when wet. Therefore they should bring a light jacket or wear a swimsuit underneath their t-shirts.
