Camping with a toddler: our packing checklist

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Camping with a baby or toddler is entirely possible and can yield some incredible, unforgettable memories – if you’re prepared. If not…well, let’s just say that we’ve been there.

Here, we’re delving into the details of what you need to successfully go camping with kids, particularly those who are very small and needy. Our camping checklist covers everything you need to have a great experience, and we’ve featured a series of hard-learned tips and tricks to help your trip go smoothly, as well as some specific product recommendations.

Let the chaos commence!

Jack Hart Content & Marketing Lead: Campsites

Raised on a steady diet of tent camping and outdoor adventures, Jack's happiest when exploring the great outdoors and has spent years exploring campsites in the UK and far beyond.

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Camping with a baby: why on earth?

Camping has evolved rapidly for me in the past few years.

Having been raised on a steady diet of campsites in the South West and flooded tents in Norfolk, I grew up accustomed to life under canvas and threw myself into wild camping adventures as an adult. Scrambling up mountainsides and pitching hammocks in forests meant that my camping set-up favoured lightweight, minimalist kit suitable for solo adventures.

When my daughter was born, I wanted her to enjoy those same formative experiences in the great outdoors – but slumming it in a bivvy bag by the shores of Grisedale Tarn isn’t exactly suited to someone still in nappies.

That means my new approach to camping has to consider her needs first. Camping with a baby is an entirely different experience to my wild camping expeditions, but it can be every bit as fun if you take the same approach to your preparation. In essence: pick the right kit for the job.

All being well, you can enjoy a brilliant family holiday on a campsite in the UK or beyond, and introduce your baby or toddler to the joys of camping. Our daughter now loves our tent and the sight of her wandering around the pitch in her Crocs and camping fleece, perfectly content gathering pine cones and acorns, definitely makes it feel worth the effort.

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If you're planning a camping trip, from a family holiday to a wild camping adventure, check out the great range of kit available on the Out & About Shop, from tents and sleeping bags to windbreaks and camping chairs!

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Kit list: camping with a baby checklist

When it comes to picking the kit you’ll need to successfully camp with a baby or toddler, there are some items that all parents will need, and then some individual bits of kit suited to your child. At a basic level, try to recreate the structure you have at home (assuming that it works) in terms of bed set-up, dinner time and chill-out time. Having some familiar items will go a long way in keeping your child happy.

For our daughter, that means having her own cot (at least for the first portion of the night), her regular chair with attached tray that she eats in, and space in the tent for her to spend some alone time with books and toys. Those basics in place, she’s well set up to accommodate some fairly substantial changes to her environment and routine.

Personal items covered, here is some camping-specific kit that will make camping with a toddler much easier:

Photo courtesy of Coleman

Tent with blacked-out sleeping compartments

This is a game changer. Blacked-out sleeping compartments use darker fabric that not only blocks out more daylight but also enhances ventilation for a better night’s sleep. Without this, you’ll need to fashion a makeshift blackout blind over a cot, which is much less effective and a good recipe for chaos!

Shop family tents here

High-quality airbed

If your baby or toddler is anything like mine, they’ll end up sleeping in your bed at some point in the night, which can be more difficult while camping than at home – unless you have a decent airbed. A poor one will lose air quickly and your child will sink into it, but a decent one – like the Coleman Supercomfort – will retain its structure and enable you both to sleep soundly.

Staff photo

Photo courtesy of easy camp

Toddler sleeping bag

When night falls over your tent, the temperature can really drop, even in the height of summer. Invest in a cosy sleeping bag for your little one and they’ll continue to snore away quite happily. You don’t need to spend much, either – we found a Quechua sleeping bag with arm holes and a hood on Vinted for just £15.

Camping lantern

Perhaps not what you expected to see on this list, but it really helped. Once your child has gone to bed, having a lantern that can be angled away from their sleeping compartment and dimmed helps parents to stay up longer without being banished from the tent. The Vango Comet was a brilliant option for us.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Toddler camping chair

One way of making some of the quieter moments in camping fun is to buy a chair with a child-friendly design. I couldn’t tell you where we found it – potentially a supermarket – but we have a chair with a lion design on the back, and our daughter loves sitting in her “roar” chair. It’s an easy win when you’re making coffee at 5.30am.

Reliable stove and coolbox

Our daughter was eating three meals a day by the time we went camping for the first time, but she also was used to drinking milk before naps and at bedtime. That meant we needed a reliable stove to heat up water for toddler formula and some way of keeping regular milk cold for a couple of days, so that we had options. If your campsite has electric hook-up points then you can take a portable fridge; if not, take a decent coolbox and find a campsite that allows you to refreeze cold packs.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Photo courtesy of Jack Hart

Off-road pushchair

Depending on how old your child is, taking a pushchair with you could make a huge difference. Our daughter can walk and run, but she does get tired and having the backup option of sitting down can help to avoid a meltdown. Even better, our pushchair, the Thule Chariot Cross 2, has an attached tarp that extends out to form a huge sunshade wherever you are, in case they (or you) need a break – absolute gold dust for parents.

Read our review

Kit list: our product recommendations

Here’s a rundown of some of the best camping gear that we’ve sampled for camping with a baby or toddler, each linking to our editors’ independent review of that item!

Outwell Virginia 5 Air TC

Winner of Tent of the Year in the Out & About Live Camping Awards 2025, the Virginia 5 Air TC from Outwell is a brilliant family tent. With a five-berth capacity, it has two generous sleeping compartments (featuring Outwell's blackout system), a large living space and a separate side porch for gear storage. Our Camping Editor, Iain Duff, has described it as the last tent you'll ever buy!

Watch our review

Thule Sun & Wind Tarp

Pitching directly from a Thule pushchair, or independently, this huge, poled tarp creates a brilliant shelter for kids from the elements. Use it at the beach or at the park – your kids will love helping to pitch it and it's got more than enough space for everyone to sit inside for lunch!

Read our review

Coleman Supercomfort Self-Inflating Sleeping Mat

This highly comfortable double airbed is a game changer for parents of young children. You get a warm, comfortable bed that's self-inflating, and it's ideal for when your toddler inevitably ends up in your bed, since it's guaranteed to remain inflated all night.

Read our review

Photo courtesy of easy camp

easy camp Skarvan 6

This six-person tunnel tent won Best Value Family Tent in the Out & About Live Camping Awards 2025, with Camping Editor, Iain Duff, praising its generous dimensions. You get two sleeping compartments behind a large living area, with an additional front porch, too, all for an affordable price tag.

Watch our review here

Top tips for camping with kids

Camping with a toddler in tow is a totally different experience to camping as a couple or on a solo adventure, and there’s definitely some challenges – that’s just part and parcel of having a young child. If they’re not sleeping well at home, it’s unlikely that heading into a tent is going to change that (though our daughter did sleep very well after loads of fresh air, so you can live in hope).

Having been camping with an 18-month-old several times and on a variety of different types of campsites, there’s a few crucial – and hard-learned – tips that every parent should know. Here’s our top five!

Photo courtesy of Jack Hart

Throw routine (mostly) out the window

Although you might have a tent with blacked-out sleeping compartments, and these certainly help, the reality is that your child will be going to bed later than they usually would – and that’s fine. They’ll have had loads of fresh air and will hopefully crash into a deep sleep when they do go down, so let them sit up by the campfire for a bit – it’s a core memory for you and them.

If you tend to plan in meal times, baths and other daily activities to a regimented schedule, you’ll need to let this go for a few days, as trying to maintain it amidst the wonderful chaos of camping will only make you frustrated. Things will be out of place and get lost, so you can’t have things as they would be at home.

That being said, if you can maintain a small semblance of routine, that can help with keeping your little one calm. If you’d normally read a book before bed, make sure you continue to do so, even if it’s at a different time – they’ll get the signal that it’s time to start winding down.

Embrace the mess

I nearly titled this tip as “keep an organised tent”, and you absolutely should, but you also need to accept that combining a toddler with camping is a formula for chaos. Wonderful, terrifying chaos.

You’ll recognise this from home: you spend each evening tidying away, and then within 10 minutes of waking up your toddler has scattered their toys around the house and thrown cereal across the kitchen floor (or is that just mine?). Now imagine that those toys and that food is stored in a supermarket bag for life in the spare sleeping compartment, and it’s easy to see how mess will quickly appear.

Just embrace the madness. Sure, spend some time tidying away if they’re down for a nap, but getting out into the outdoors and treading muddy footprints around is part of the fun of going camping, so just breathe it all in. And make another coffee.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Plan in quiet time

Your baby or toddler is going to spend a lot of time charging around outside, crashing through foliage and off on day trips to the beach, play parks and nearby attractions, which all sounds fantastic – and overstimulating.

We found that carving out a portion of the day to place our daughter in our bed with a book and some drawing was the perfect tonic to these fast-paced days, helping her to maintain some calm and avoid a potential meltdown.

Prior planning and preparation...

...prevents p**s poor performance, as the old military adage goes, and that’s certainly true for camping with a toddler. The aforementioned mess is unavoidable but you can take a few steps to maintain some order.

Most importantly, if your child is still drinking milk, as ours was, you need to have these bottles cleaned and the milk prepared in time, including prepping some to take with you on day trips. With more limited access to cleaning equipment and a bit more faff involved in boiling water, this requires a bit of forward planning.

Being proactive in preparing feeds for your baby can help to avoid potential meltdowns! Which seems to be a running theme here…

Photo courtesy of Unsplash

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

5. Slow down!

After several tips regarding managing your child’s moods and avoiding issues, it’s worth ending on a positive. You’ve decided to take your toddler camping to give them a great experience, so make sure you slow down and try to see this exciting new world through their eyes.

They’ve likely never seen a tent, a campfire, or maybe even farm animals before, so tolerate and indulge their curiosity – it’s what makes camping with a toddler fun!

FAQs: camping with a toddler

Can you go camping with a baby?

Absolutely! Camping with a baby is not only possible, it can be one of the most unforgettable and life-affirming experiences you have as a parent. Just remember to plan ahead and get the right camping gear to keep them safe, warm and well fed. For more details, scroll up!
What should you take to camp with a baby or toddler?

We’ve listed a more detailed camping checklist above, but in short: a baby or toddler sleeping bag, a tent with blacked-out sleeping compartments, a high-quality airbed, a reliable stove for preparing or warming milk, some way of keeping food or milk cold, and any specific items your child needs or is used to having.
Where can you go camping with a toddler?

There are plenty of family-friendly campsites in the UK and you can find the best of them on Campsite Finder!
We’d also recommend staying fairly close to home for your first camping trip with your baby or toddler. This means you’ll know the area well and can plan some fun days out, but it also means you’re not far away from home in case something does go wrong and you need to bail out. Always plan for the worst and then enjoy the best!