Teaching children to pack for a trip.

If you've been visiting for a while you'd know that I have four children, my eldest been an eight year old. At school this year part of the curriculum involves all year three students participating in an over night camp in order to prepare him for future camps in the coming years. Last week during school drop off I saw the year five students all standing around waiting for there bus to arrive. We attend a small school so there's about forty children going away on camp. However, if you'd driven pass you would have thought that each child was going away for an entire week.

 

Now I know what you're thinking 'how hard can it be to pack for an overnight trip'. For the majority of the children in my son's class it also appeared that many of them were going away for a week. As this is my son's first camp we worked with him to help him understand what he needed to pack while also getting his input about were to place his things in the suitcase.

 

1. Choose a suitcase, bag or backpack. We started by choosing the correct case to take, we all decided that an overnight case would work perfectly for him.

 

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2. Collect all the items needed.  Find an clean area that will allow you to collect all the items you need. Once you have all the clothing, shoes, toiletries, towels and bedding start ticking them off your list.

 

3. Add small items into pockets. If your case has pockets make sure you take advantage of them, put your socks, swimmers, underpants and or toiletries in these pockets. This will free up the space inside the case allowing you to add more important things.

 

4. Roll, roll and roll some more. This is important especially if you have a few different things to pack. Once you have all your t-shirts together its important to roll them up and then placing them together inside the case. Continue working through all the clothing and place each group inside the case.

 

5. Place larger items inside the case. This is a good time to place your shoes and toiletries inside the case. If you're shoes are a bit dirty place them inside a plastic shopping bag and this will protect your clothes.

 

6. Use your zippers. If you have a zip on your case that allows you to expand the depth of the case take advantage of this option. I was able to fold my sons pillow in half, place it on top of the clothes and then close it just by using the expanding zipper.

 

 

The picture above is the bag that my son took on camp with him and he held everything he needs except his sleeping bag. He has an extra set of clothes which he decided he would need in case he got wet or dirty. As we didn't have a raincoat we left that out of the bag, Caelan wasn't happy about this but as the shops had closed there was nothing we could do about it.

 

I am please to say that we didn't have any issues packing the bag, Caelan was really good at picking the clothing he would need and the entire process took us about twenty minutes. If you have any good packing tips I'd love to hear them. I'll leave you with a picture of my happy little camper just moments before he walked out to the bus.

 

 

Megan