Most of us love adventures as adults. We love experiencing new moments, being excited and wowed. Of course, many of our kids feel the same.
Adventures are the breeding ground for imagination, to write, to create stories and to make memories. As kids age adventures change but one thing that’s for sure is the adventures still don’t have to be extravagant or expensive.
When your kids are little adventures can be exploring new parks, new sensory bins, new trails through the farm field, a new activity like picking berries or snowshoeing and millions of other things. As kids get older, those same adventures still fit, however you may slowly start to build more complex adventures together.
For instance, we recently started to . . .
look for nearby hikes. We loved the Luskville Falls and are looking to try one in the other direction of the Pontiac. We also have camped where adventures are always calling our name. Often these simple, often free activities create the best memories for our littles.
This article idea came to me on my holiday this past week, because it was truly something I was forgetting about. My family took a trip out East. We enjoyed sightseeing, beaches, a bus tour and a week spent in a cottage with family. Even though we worked hard to find places to show them (like lighthouses — I loved these, them not as much) the most memorable adventure happened outside our cottage one evening.
After a long day of sight seeing, we arrived home and needed to walk the dog. All five kids wanted to come with me so we took one small phone flashlight and set out with our pup. We walked a piece up the road and decided it was too dark and turned to head back to the cottage. I should mention, we were near a farm. On our way back (crossing the exact same path as moments before) one of the girls heard a “moo,” I thought they were making the sound to scare the others but in the next second we came face to face with at least three cows. I was so flummoxed, the dog was growling and everyone was screaming at the same time — so we ran.
We ran and screamed and ran and screamed until we reached home. They of course beat me into the cottage, and their voices, wow. Each of them was busy telling an adult exactly what had happened at top volume. The story was incredible, we’d been chased by a whole herd of cows, we almost died, they were going to eat us, they were outside our door and on and on (clearly we need to visit more farms). The imagination and storytelling was soaring.
After catching my breath and accounting for all the kids and pup I went into damage control with the kids. We took a minute to realize that sometimes when we are in the dark and not quite sure about what’s happening our imagination fills in the blanks. We were all okay and we weren’t sure they even actually chased us etc. Soon after, my sister took them for a drive to look for cow tracks to solidify that this had actually happened. It turns out that there were in fact multiple cow tracks and a message to the nearby farm (who we had been in contact earlier in the week) confirmed they had just secured the escapees.
I’m telling you this adventure was their favourite moment of the entire trip. It was free, it was easy, it was convenient, it was exciting, maybe a bit dangerous without realizing it and it was memorable.
The next morning a few of the girls were journaling and what do you think they wrote about? Their cow chase.
Up until this moment I had been so concerned that they see all there was to see on our vacation that I may have been forgetting about adventures and exploring. It reminded me that trips to new beaches and walks exploring the area around us was really the kind of adventures they were interested in.
This experience helped remind me to stop over planning and let the fun, accidental things happen.
I hope this helps remind you to take some time out of the planned world we live in and live free with your kids — adventures await.
