This post covers 45 outdoor and wilderness survival skills for kids, organized into nine categories: basic wilderness skills, camping, navigation, food, local wildlife, water, signaling and rescue, weather and body safety, and insect/pest protection. Skills range from fire-building and knot-tying to water purification, recognizing hypothermia and heatstroke, and signaling for rescue. A free printable checklist lets kids track which skills they’ve mastered. The list is age-flexible. Some skills suit young children, others are better for teens, and every skill should be practiced with adult supervision.
Updated September 2026 by Lisa Bedford. Originally published by Bethanne Kim, August 2017
Kids love to be outdoors, but they should know not only basic safety rules but a myriad of skills that make being outdoors more fun. Check out our list of outdoor and wilderness skills your kids will love, now updated with water, signaling, weather safety, and pest protection skills that didn’t make the original list.
Some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases without any increase in price to you.
If you’d like a printable list so you and your kids can keep track of what they’ve learned, scroll down to the bottom of this post!
Some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases without any increase in price to you.
Basic Wilderness Survival Skills for Kids
- Rowing and steering a rowboat, canoe, and any other watercraft common in your area
- Safely use an axe and/or hatchet
- Safely build, start, maintain, and extinguish fires, including fires for signaling, warmth, and cooking
- Prep wood for fire, from kindling through larger logs
- Make firestarters from a variety of resources, including those you can find in the woods
- Keep a blade tool clean and sharp
- Tie different types of knots
- Water safety, beyond just swimming
- Camouflage — blending in with surroundings to stay hidden from animals or avoid detection.
Camping
- Find or build a shelter in the wilderness
- Select a campsite, including weather and safety considerations
- Make a tarp shelter
- Camping in multiple weather zones and environments (beach, snow)
- Local edible and medicinal plant foraging skills
- Stay warm, cool, and dry in the elements
- Pitch a tent
- Understand dietary needs and how to meet them using wild plants and game
Finding Their Way
- Climb a tree to get away from predators, get directional bearings, and hunt
- Read several kinds of maps (including topographic) and use at least one kind of compass
- Read the sky for directions, time and approaching bad weather
- Use a GPS
Want more useful info from Survival Mom?
Food
- Dutch oven cooking
- Raise food livestock
- Harvest and prepare food livestock for eating
- Build and use a cooking fire
Local Wildlife
- Identify and understand animal tracks and scat
- Understand basic feral animal behavior
- Recognize dangerous local animals, their habitats, and signs they are nearby
- Identify local poisonous animals and their habitats
- Identify local edible plants and animals, and their habitat
- Fish and hunt using a bow and a gun
- Clean and prepare fish and wild game for eating
Water
33. Locate natural water sources (streams, springs, ponds, morning dew, plant transpiration)
34. Purify water using boiling, filtration, and purification tablets
35. Build a basic solar still
36. Recognize signs that a water source may be contaminated
Signaling & Rescue
37. Use a whistle correctly (three sharp blasts is the universal distress signal)
38. Build and use a signal fire (three fires in a triangle is a recognized distress pattern)
39. Use a mirror and ground-to-air distress symbols to signal rescuers
40. Understand why staying put when lost is usually safer than wandering further
Weather & Body Safety
41. Recognize the signs of hypothermia and heat exhaustion/heatstroke, and how to respond
42. Layer clothing and adjust for changing wilderness conditions to help prevent both
Insect & Pest Protection
43. Identify tick-prone areas and check properly for ticks afterward
44. Recognize and avoid poisonous or aggressive stinging insects common to the area
45. Use both natural and manufactured insect repellent methods
Check Out These Other Skills Lists For Kids
- 32 Basic Survival Skills for Kids
- 32 Mental and Urban Survival Skills for Kids
- 32 Survival Skills Your Child Should Know and Be Able To Do ASAP!
- The 4 Top Survival Skills You Must Teach Your Kids Now
Frequently Asked Questions
Many of these skills can start young. Even a 5-year-old can learn basic water safety or how to stay warm and dry. Others, like safely using an axe, hunting, or building a solar still, are better suited to older kids and teens. Use your own judgment about your child’s maturity and physical ability rather than their age alone.
Fire safety, water purification, and signaling for help are good first skills. They’re foundational, relatively low-risk to practice, and immediately useful on any camping trip, not just in a true survival situation.
There’s overlap, but they’re not identical. Bushcraft tends to focus on thriving comfortably in the outdoors — shelter, fire, tools, foraging. Wilderness survival adds the skills you’d need if something went wrong, like knowing how to signal for rescue, water purification in an emergency, and recognizing hypothermia or heatstroke. I’ve covered both with this list.
Not for most of them. A pocketknife, a whistle, a compass, and basic first aid supplies cover a lot of ground. Save specialized gear (like water filters or fire-starting kits) for skills your child has already shown interest in.
No, every skill on this list should be taught and practiced with adult supervision, especially anything involving fire, blades, water, or wildlife. The goal is competence and confidence, not independence from adult guidance. As kids get older and grow in maturity as well as mastery of skills, they’ll know when and how to use these skills on their own.
How many of these wilderness survival skills have your children acquired?
More than you’d think. A backyard is a great place to practice knot tying, pitching a tent, building a supervised campfire, and testing water purification methods (boiling, filtration) before ever needing them for real. Camouflage and tracking work, too. Even a small yard has birds, insects, and the occasional animal visitor to spot and identify. Signaling skills like whistle blasts and mirror signaling can be practiced in the open without going anywhere. Weather-reading is another one — learning to watch the sky and noticing temperature and wind changes. Save the skills that need real wilderness, like hunting, building a solar still, navigating with a map and compass over distance, for camping trips or hikes, and use the backyard to build the foundational habits first.
Want a Printable Checklist of These Skills?
The Final Word
None of these 45 skills will turn your kid into a survivalist overnight, but that’s not the goal. What these skills will do is build, one skill at a time, a kid who isn’t afraid of the outdoors, who knows what to do with a fire, a water source, a compass, or a scary moment instead of just hoping an adult handles it. Start with whatever’s practical for your family right now, whether that’s a backyard fire pit or a week-long camping trip, and let the list grow with them.
I think this is an awsome list. I would add to the hunting and fishing trapping. I also did not see driving a vehicle or recreational vehicles used by the family. This is very important as a teenager may need to drive the boat snow machine or atv to get help. Also first aid skills are very important.
Thanks! I am making these lists into a series of books and driving is included in “26 Mental and Urban Skills” for exactly that reason. First Aid is covered in “26 Basic Life Skills. There are too many important skills for one list – or book!
What about communications? Knowing and being able to use Morse code and military hand signals could save lives.
You are completely correct, and those will be included in the book I’m writing on “26 Outdoor Life Skills”.
I am scout masters with troop 214 vicco ky and I a showing my scouts how to survive in the out doors but patents are hard to get into the active. How can I get parents to help out?
There’s a difference between survival and bushcraft and I’d say this list is bushcraft and not survival although bushcraft covers many survival skills. Survival would be shelter, filtering/purifying water, fire, etc. Swimming, really? One of the simplest yet important tools/skills to have is to have a compass and know how to use it. Also, it’s safer to not eat vegetation unless it’s known to be safe absolutely. As mentioned by another, communication is also important in a survival situation so as to be rescued, but it’s not mentioned. I’m not talking electronic communications alone, but signal fires, three signals in a row, navigation markings to guide rescuers and know where you are or have been, etc.
Hey Juan, don’t underestimate the importance of swimming. This is a skill that you need to survive in harsh condition. At the very least, you need to be able to float on water for a short period of time.
Most of those are covered either in this post or in one of the companion posts. While I would certainly agree people aren’t going to go for a day at the beach in a survival situation, there are MANY situations where the ability to swim could help them save themselves, save another, or get to needed help / supplies. I remain firmly of the opinion that swimming is very important.
Agree with Liz Long, true that situations vary. And People are not going to the beach for a whole day but also swimming is critical for survival and kids should know that skill correctly.
Agree! Kids should know that skill correctly!
Great lists. To add on that, I would attach a whistle to kid’s backpack so that as soon as they realize they have become separated from the group, they will start blowing that whistle like crazy.
This is a great list. Children spend so much time with technology these days and need to get back to nature and learning basic skills. My kids love the outdoors and cooking, so they have done quite a few things on this list already. For example, they have all helped to pitch a tent and prepare food. There are plenty more that I can take on with them as a challenge to learn. My boys are 5, 7, and 13, so there is something in this list that is suitable for all their ages.
The point no 20, read the sky is something really important for camping in a deep forest. It saved me last time.
I bet, most of the people avoid point no 27. But, it’s really important for everyone’s safety.
Agreed, Fred!