Let's Go Camping! Great ideas for indoor fun on cold days

I remember when I was an elementary school kid, the thought of camping in my bedroom or turning my bed into a tent or treehouse was a pretty constant theme on many after school free afternoons. I would gather sheets, blankets, cushions, towels…anything really that I could transform into the building materials for my own little bed-house.

During the winter season, indoor kid’s activities like video games, movies, and Lego-cityscapes can become really old, really fast. Turning your kids on to some indoor decorating à la indoor tent-beds, bunk bed canopy tents, or a mishmash of fabrics to create a kid-sized outdoor hidey-hole (weather permitting) can keep them busy for hours with creative juices flowing freely. Sure, your home may look like a Goodwill drop-off zone afterwards, but during the festive season, I bet you everyone’s does!

 At Monkey Bunks we have a range of bunk beds and teepee-style beds that   you can literally turn into a tent, a treehouse, or a secluded “kids only!”   reading nook. Let go of your dreams of a tidy house, make a start with a bedroom tent…and let the kids loose!

Triple bunk beds from Monkey Bunks make for amazing scaffolding for triple storey camping beds.

Set up a pop-up tent on the top bunk, hang some colourful sheets down the sides and voilà! Kids only private zone.

-> SHOP BUNK BEDS <-

All humans, even little ones, need some privacy from time to time, and the feeling of being closed off from the rest of the household in your own little space, only occasionally opening a small slit in the sheeting to allow a plate of cookies through, then hurriedly re-establishing your seclusion, can make a dreary afternoon seem like an outdoor adventure…even more than that, as many parents will be able to confirm, to build your own camping or living space, shut off—albeit it superficially with a couple of sheets and zip-open tent doors is a child’s experiment in being grown up, having their own house, and living outside the family.

A bunk bed can be turned into a mobile home or even a western style covered wagon by popping a tent on the top bunk and making some curtains to close off the bottom bunk.

Not only does this give kids a sense of privacy from the rest of the house, but if they’re sharing a room with a bunk bed, a goodly sense of privacy from each other is often a good thing!

 A child doesn't need an entire bedroom to   themselves to have access to a quiet, private space   they can call their own. For kids sharing a room,   opting for two single beds on opposite ends and   allowing them to personalize—and “privatize”—their   corner the way they want to is a great way for the   budding little sprig of independence to start   shooting  some roots, and it also allows you to give   them the message that wanting alone time, your   own space, and the freedom to opt out of group or   family games in favor of doing something on your   own is OK, allowed, even encouraged.

A teepee bed-turned-private-reading-nook is great for kids moving into later childhood, and at Monkey Bunks we have a range of Teepee-style beds to choose from. Help you older child make it their own with fairy lights, wall stickers, a funky rug, real-live pot plants in imaginative pots set about the bedroom, paint a tree with hanging fruit or songbirds against the wall…whatever! The point is to create objects and spaces that belong to him or her, it is theirs, they can move it, chuck it, swop it around, say they hate it…it is theirs to do with as they please.

-> SHOP HOUSE AND TENT BEDS <-

Tipi tent bed

At Monkey Bunks we are BIG on nurturing little humans into creative, confident, and über-cool adults, and we believe we can contribute to that by starting conversations on kids being kids, that beauty and style is not just for grown-ups, that there is time and space for privacy and quiet time, even if you share a room.

In fact, when it comes to kids and their imaginations, we at Monkey Bunks like to describe ourselves as being beyond flexible. We would even go as far as saying that it doesn’t really matter if it’s a bunk bed, a teepee bed, a single bed, or a loft bed, creating a private space for older kids, or just a plain old fun kids’ escape into imagining a house in the grown-up world, even one with a duvet for a roof, bedsheets for walls, and strategically fastened pillowcase for a window or door, we say: “Go with it!”

Our products aim at providing the building blocks for your child’s imagination when it comes to decorating, making a place their own, having space for sleepovers, dreaming of other places and even other worlds…all you need to do is provide some “architectural” building supplies to let creativity and individualism flourish, like lamps, shades, paints, stickers, fairy lights, a couple of pieces of furniture—and when it comes to that, we have plenty of leads for you to follow up on. Beyond that, it really is up to you and your kids to decide what works for you!

We'll leave you with one more parting idea - check out the most versatile indoor/outdoor playhouse, HAUS for hours of indoor creative fun!