OKHMamma – Page 4 – The Outdoor Kid Handbook

When to Start Doing Outdoor Activities With Your Kids

Tips & How-Toall ages, babies, small kids

When we had our first kid, we didn't have a good roadmap of when we could start doing outdoor activities with kids. Many times I felt like we were winging it and also that we were pushing to do it faster than society suggests. We've been lucky to meet many people over the years who also took their babies on outdoor adventures as we did. Here is a summary of what I wish we knew when we had our first kid - it's part of our General Advice page in the When to Start section. Hiking: Start hiking as soon…

Outdoor Inspiration for November

Outdoor Inspiration

Our monthly post to highlight the best writing and most useful tips written by Outdoor Parents over the past month.You won't typically find gear reviews or travel guides here - on this site we focus on the skills and inspiration to help you get outside and stay outside with your kids. We also believe that everyone should feel welcome in the outdoors, so we share articles by parents and outdoors-people of color to make sure everyone is learning each other's perspectives.Hopefully, this encourages you to plan your next outdoor adventures, reflect on what you were able to accomplish over the…

Balancing Outdoor Adventure with Work and Kids’ Activities

Tips & How-To

How do you balance outdoor adventure with "normal" life? I've been struggling with that for almost 11 years. Here is what I've learned, from my experiences and from what my friends have taught me. It has also been added to our General Advice page, Outdoor Life Balance section. Fall hiking near Mt. Reba, Bear Valley, CA (Washoe Land) One of the biggest challenges of outdoor parenting is setting up our schedules to keep going on trips and getting outside, despite the pressure of sports teams, school events, friends’ birthday parties, and demands from work. Additionally, it’s important to balance between…

Interview: Scott Turner (Orienteering, Hiking, Skiing, Camping, Biking, Backpacking )

Parent Interviewsbackpacking, biking, camping, orienteering, skiing

This week we have an interview with an outdoor parent whose children are grown up, so he has the perspective of taking them outdoors through all the stages of childhood. He is also a very experienced at orienteering, which I think is a great way to get kids outside that I haven't tried yet with my kids. He also happens to be my uncle, and when I was a kid I got to go orienteering with them. Enjoy! Name: Scott TurnerLocation: Suburban Boston, MA, USAFamily Activities: hiking, orienteering, cross-country skiing (and a little downhill), car camping, swimming less regularly canoeing, bicycling on dedicated…

Backcountry Skiing with Kids

Tips & How-Toskiing

Before we had kids, my husband and I enjoyed backcountry skiing. I wasn’t as good of a skier, but I loved the peace and quiet of skinning up a slope and spending the night in one of the Sierra Club huts with friends and exploring the runs near the hut. We are working to find ways to start doing that again with our kids - we will hopefully have some updates on it this winter as we try it out more. This post is part of our Skiing/Snowboarding page. A note on this section: it is based more on research and…

Outdoor Inspiration for October

Outdoor Inspiration

All-Weather Camping

Tips & How-Tocamping

For this week we have an update to our camping section, with tips on camping in weather. You may wonder what we know about camping in the rain since we live in sunny California, but we both grew up on the east coast and have plenty of experience camping and hiking in the rain! Unless you only camp if the weather is perfect (like summertime in California) you’re going to have to have contingency plans to deal with weather when you’re camping. When you’re an adult, it’s a lot easier to just wing-it when the weather is bad but with…

Hiking Food for Kids and Babies

Tips & How-Tobabies, hiking, small kids

This week's post is a new section for the Hiking Page that covers the topic of what food to bring while hiking. As always, this is intended to be a living document and we'll add in any new tips we get from comments or from any interviews we do, so please give us improvement ideas! Having the right food can be the difference between a joyful hike with kids and a miserable slog. Kids don't understand "powering-through" when you're running low on food and almost at the trailhead or don't like the food you bring. They can often just refuse to…

Different climbing disciplines, with kids

Tips & How-Toclimbing, small kids

For this weeks post, here is our first page for the climbing section. We haven't been very successful in getting our kids to go climbing, probably because we mostly did multi-pitch trad climbing before kids. Here is what I wish I knew before we had kids: If you loved climbing before you had kids, the good news is that there are lots of ways to keep climbing after you have kids. The bad news is that you may have to change which disciplines you do. And if your partner was your primary climbing partner, you may have to get better…

Choosing Camping Gear for Families

Tips & How-Tobabies, camping, small kids

This week's post is a new Gear Selection section of the Camping page. We hope it's helpful, and as always, we love feedback! This section is a summarization of the gear tips for camping that are included in the different camping sections, with some additional tips added. Since the philosophy of this website is to not recommend certain specific gear band instead to give criteria of what to look for when selecting gear, that is what you'll find here. General: Packing for car camping is a lot faster if you are not filling up every square inch of your car when packing. If you…