It's no secret that kids love camping, but you can't take them to the mountains or the lake every weekend.
One simple alternative is to host a camping trip in your own backyard. You can set up a tent, spend the evening around the campfire, and make the most of the warm weather by sleeping outside under the stars. Your kids can invite their friends and have a great, memorable night.
Here are a few tips that can help you make your backyard camping party a success.
1) Get the campfire started quickly.
Kids are notoriously impatient, and waiting to start a fire is no exception.
In order to get your party started off on a positive note, you’ll want to make sure you have everything in place to get your fire started fast. In addition to your firewood for sale, you should also have oak or hickory kindling at the ready. And if you have fresh heart pine on hand, it can help you fire starters even faster.
The kids can even help you set up the kiln dried firewood, kindling, and heart pine in your fire pit, and you’ll have the fire underway so quickly that you won’t have to worry about losing their attention.
If you really want to impress the kids with a fast fire start, consider using a Cutting Edge Firewood cigar match. When used with our fire starters and premium wood, you'll only need a single match. The kids will definitely be impressed by your ability to get your fire started with one strike of the map! Cutting Edge boxes have everything you need for a fast, easy, and gorgeous fire.
2) Plan a kid-friendly menu.
This isn't complicated.
When kids think about camping, there are just two foods they want to eat: hot dogs and s’mores. These are the ideal menu items for your backyard campfire party, and with kiln-dried or firewood for cooking, they’re bound to taste better than anything the kids would have cooked up on a “real” camping trip.
With our roasting forks, it’s easy to cook marshmallows and hot dogs evenly on all sides, and you can cook two hot dogs or four marshmallows at the same time, so you’ll have no problems feeding the crowd. Plus, because you have access to more ingredients in your house than you would out in the wild, you can try out some mouthwatering alternative s’mores recipes and use unique condiments to make hot dogs more fun.
3) Help the Kids set-up their tent
Learning to set-up a tent is an important skill for kids who love camping. It requires teamwork and is a great opportunity for them to practice working together.
Make sure you're nearby and can help them as required. It should be a challenge, but not so difficult that the kids decide they're better off going inside. This, of course, means you need to know how to set-up the tent! So make sure you have a plan and help the kids set-up the tent so they can move quickly to the fun.
4) Teach the kids how to tend the fire safely.
Whenever there’s a campfire going, kids have a tendency to want to poke at the flames--even if it means getting a little too close for comfort. Not only can this be dangerous, but it may not be good for the fire, depending on how their poking rearranges the logs on the fire pit.
At your backyard camping party, you can take the opportunity to teach kids how to maintain a fire--but safely, using a fire iron. A fire iron is long enough--almost 4 feet--to keep your kids a safe distance from the fire, but they can still arrange and rearrange the wood in the fire in order to optimize burn time and create pockets of heat for roasting hot dogs and s’mores.
5) Make sure the fire is fully extinguished before the kids go to bed.
For safety’s sake, you definitely don’t want your fire pit rekindling during the night, when all the kids are asleep in the tent. With a firmly-fitting steel fire pit cover, you can eliminate this possibility. A fire pit cover will completely cut off the supply of oxygen to the fire, so there’s no chance that any of the embers will be able to rekindle and end up setting some of the remaining wood in your fire pit ablaze.
If you don't have a fire pit cover, then teach the kids how to extinguish the fire with water. Use plenty of water, stir everything around, and add even more water. Learn more about extinguishing campfires safely.
6) Plan to start a fire in the morning.
Just as you would on a real camping trip, you should plan to keep the party going in the morning. For the kids, there’s nothing quite like waking up in the tent to the aroma of kiln dried firewood.
You can also use the fire pit to cook up your breakfast. For instance, you can use roasting forks to cook up breakfast sausages, or you can make homemade pancakes over the flames with your skillet. For an even sweeter breakfast, consider concocting a breakfast s’mores recipe with bananas and peanut butter alongside the standard marshmallows and chocolate. For more ides, check out our 7 tips for cooking over a campfire.
Are you ready?
Don't let a trip to the store for firewood prevent you from hosting a backyard campout. Cutting Edge Firewood offers complementary artisan delivery to local customers and great shipping options across the United States. It couldn't get any easier!
Stock up on everything you need for a successful party by firewood for sale now!
