Your best suggestions for campfire fun with primary school age children

[FuckYouChrisAndThatHorse]

The kids are going to their dad's for two weeks from Monday, so we've decided to fit in a mini-staycation in the garden this weekend.

We will have a fire pit for cooking and marshmallows and want to stay up late playing games and telling stories. Does anyone have some good ideas for evening things to do with a 7 and 10 year old? I'd really like to make this weekend a special start to the holidays.

Thank you!

Make 'dampers' - lots of recipes on google, very easy, lots of fun. Eat with jam or choc spread.
Wood whittling, my 7 year old has learned to use a penknife safely, they sit for hours scraping away and love it! Buy the kindling from a local garage, soft and easy to whittle.
Lots of games you can play- shopping list memory game, Google scout camp games.
Singing, each make an instrument out of something they find in the garden.
Learn to make grass whistles lifestyle.howstuffworks.com/crafts/quick-easy-crafts/easy-nature-activities-for-kids4.htm
Have fun!

Cook sausages on sticks. Use a smoked sausage like mattesons so you don't need to worry about undercooking them and sharpen the ends of long sticks with a knife (even better let the kids sharpen them under supervision) and stick the sausage on and just hold them over the fire (preferably when the flames have died down a bit). Haven't met a kid yet that doesn't love cooking like that!

Can switch sausages for chunks of bread (so toasting them) and pretty much anything that'll stay on the end of a stick. My DD and her friends loved doing mushrooms and chunks of rawish nectarine (goes sweet when cooked) last time.

And of course just playing with fire is great fun - adding sticks, adding leaves to see how the smoke changes, things like that. DD and my little cousins have been having a blast playing with the fire outside the last couple of days! Just make sure you have a bucket of water handy.

Can you borrow a tent and sleep outside?

Lie on blankets or sun beds and look at the stars, binoculars are good for looking at planets. Identify constellations, spot satellites. I think the Greenwich Observatory has an updated daily list of what can be seen where.

Make paper bag lanterns. Get sturdy paper carrier bags, tne kids can cut designs into the sides, put a couple of inches of sand or gravel in the bottom, put lighted tea lights in the middle of the sand. (Usual safety common sense applies)

Oh yes, should have said we will all be sleeping in a tent and I have an event shelter in case it rains too 😊

Oh these are all lovely ideas. Perfect. Just what I was hoping for. You are all brilliant!

Hang loops of glow sticks round tree branches.

Glow stick jewellery and take pics . See what you can make: spectacles, ears, etc. (99p store usually have packs)

You can never have enough glow sticks

If you are the miner I am thinking of you have a rather big garden.

Use glow sticks to set a trail
To follow in the dark. Marshmallows at the end of it to take back and toast.

I might indeed have some space available

That is a very lovely idea, thank you.

1 x Banana
1 x bar of chocolate (Cadburys Caramel or a flake)
Cut banana lengthways (skin on) to make a pocket for your chocolate. Tuck in the chocolate then wrap in foil
pop into the smouldering coals of the campfire or BBQ for 10 mins.

Open up for bananachocolateygoodness...