Introducing Your Family To Bushcraft

Daily family life can be hectic. Rushing to work, school runs, clubs, pressures from bosses and meeting family needs can leave you all stressed and frazzled. Fitting in quality family time, away from screens and stresses can be hard, and often feels too much hassle to sort, but it’s worth it.

Time as a family doing an activity together improves communication, strengthens relationships and reduces stress. Learning a new skill together makes this time even more valuable as it boosts self esteem and promotes resilience and adaptability, all essential life skills.

Introducing your family to bushcraft can spark engagement with nature while boosting their confidence as they expand their horizons, as well as learning about and assessing risk with some of their new found skills.

Children naturally love to explore, learn and move and bushcraft harnesses all these qualities. Whether it’s building a shelter, lighting a fire or learning about the forest around them, children of all ages thrive and strengthen as they engage in fun activities out in the woods. 

On a basic level, just the activity of walking and exploring the woodland develops balance and co ordination as they jump ditches, balance on fallen trees and swing from branches. Then learning skills such as fire lighting requires logical thinking, observation skills and fine motor skills too. All of these factors transfer into positive qualities outside of the woods with better mental health, increased self esteem and improved concentration. So introducing your family to bushcraft has so many benefits to their health and well being as well as their personal development. 

Activities involving focus and time in the fresh air also promote better quality sleep, and let’s face it, that is something all family members will benefit from. It is also amazing to see how many ‘fussy eaters’ will devour a whole meal because they are hungry from outdoor activities and food cooked on the campfire tastes amazing!

As family members learn and develop their bushcraft skills they can learn food prep and campfire cooking. Often family members who aren’t keen to cook at home in the kitchen are suddenly enthusiastic to cook over the campfire, and who can blame them, it’s great fun and the food tastes better.

You may have concerns about introducing your family to bushcraft because some of the activities and skills require the use of knives. But learning proper and safe knife handling skills teaches family members to respect knives and how to use them sensibly and safely. Sat around the campfire learning how to safely carve, promotes concentration, respect for tools and is a relaxing and mindful activity to engage in. It also brings about a feeling of satisfaction and achievement as carving skills develop and different items are made. So whether it’s learning to make a basic tent peg to secure your shelter or carving an intricate spoon, this skill is a great activity to de-stress and connect with your family group.  

So what are you waiting, come out to the woods with your family and learn some new skills!