cold weather sleeping gear for young kids

I have a couple of old light weight bags that are used as an extra blanket, easy to throw off if hot or can be wrapped around if cold. Got them from a thrift shop for a few dollars each.

Hi D-Jack,

We did this 18 months ago with a 2.5 year old and a 6 month old with a southern cross tent, we met no one else crazy enough to do this with kids our age, but we had lots of fun. In order to keep the kids warm we did the following:

1. Bought thermal tops, pants, gloves and beenies for the kids (From kathmandu on sale)
2. Used adult sleeping bags for the kids but folded the bags in half and tucked them under the self inflating mattress, you can also put the matress inside the bag if you want to make it more stable as well.

No one got cold during the night using these steps above

have previously travelled through the deserts with 4 kids and clothes are the go - thermals and socks and beanies (these very important). some of the camping stores sell reasonable sleeping bags but it is also fairly easy to knock up a cotton covered foam 'doona' that is thin enough to travel with but will supplement the sleeping bag. have a good time and your kids will develop an appreciation of what is 'out there'........and it is amazing how they then 'relate' to kids who have never done this type of thing - even at a young age. rgds

We used these from kathmandu when ours was young.



About $35 when on sale. Not sure if they have ones for 2-3 year olds.

R.

When my kids were young they slept in the double swag with the Mrs and I used the single.
Cheers

What about one of those Coleman Tent Heaters?? We borrowed one in the HCountry when it was minus lots, and it was brilliant - too hot for me. Canisters dont last long though.

I bought cammo his own Winter sleeping bag, full sized, but he will grow into it.

Hes been camping since he was 9mths old and loves it.

With air beds, a blanket between the tent floor and the bed, and one between the air bed and sleeping bag works well.. Even Shade Cloth under tent works well as a barrier, have it 4ft outsde the doors and use it to stop crap going in the tent too..

YMMV

Warm clothing as others have said is probably best.
Take care is using blankets because they can fall off during night, especially with squirmers/wrigglers. However if the blankets are large you can wrap them under the matresses to secure them - this works well. Those fluffy light ones you can get in Big W are great, and don't cost the earth.
Also you could try two of the summer type bags - one inside the other.
Enjoy the trip.

I would also use some type of mattress protector - one of the wool type ones to stop the cold from coming up through the mattress particularly for air mattresses etc (I know you said it is self inflating type).

When I was in the Army we used to carry the small roll up foam mattresses to do this when we had to sleep on the ground - it worked wonders.

Wemuse hot water bottles :) . Even for the wife.

Have been camping with the boys when young to temps well under 0.

Just plenty of layers.
Trackies, etc first, then a light weight sleeping bag, then a throw over blanket.
And an extra blanket under the 20mm foam mattress.

Just put one sleeping bag inside the other. That's what us queenslanders did in the Vic high country in the snow.

Hi

I brought my daughter a kids sleeping bag, I think it is a Roman and it is brilliant. It has no stiching a hood and tapers just a little, has KIDS written on it and a little pocket. She likes to be warm and we have slept in places that have been well bellow freezing, she likes to rug up in her winter PJ's but tends to open it up after a while as it gets to hot for her.

I do not know what sort of tent you have, but we find that once it is all closed up with four people inside it tends to warm up, we have a little gas heater that I put on for about half an hour be for the kids go to bed, it just takes the chill off why that get changed and into bed and then on again when we wake up to get changed in front of.

Have fun

Craig

Hi D-Jack,

We have 2 boys & we got both of them sleeping bags from Black Wolf.The bags are rated to -10c ( i think) & have so far been great. they are not kid size but are the ones that are tapered at the bottom & with hood at top,which seems to be ok. We thought if we were going to spend $$ on good quality then we wanted something that would last the boys a long while.

Have had no probs with boys getting cold.The bags can also be unzipped to be used like doona at other times.

Hope this helps!

It used to be easy when we had only two :-)

Used to just zip the bags together and kids would crawl in with us...

Now we have 3 kids and they have grown up 9,8,6 they have there own tent and -10 bags etc, strange thing is that the boys are fine but occasionally my daughter complains of getting cold... Gonna buy her an arctic bag :-)

Matt

We did Broken Hill and Mungo in June/July and it was definately spanner weather overnight. Not as bad as Davies Plain in April (-4 ANZAC Day morn...)

We had a flannel sheet cut in half and sewed into a pocket to make sleeping bag liners for the girls (3 & 6). It's amazing how much difference a bag liner makes to warmth.

We also used a Coleman ProCat catalytic heater. We run ours of a four kilo gas bottle rather than the canisters. Much more cost effective. And I made a 12v to 3v converter so we could run the fan off the 12v supply in the camper. I actually ran it a little lower than 3 v to reduce fan noise. Buying the heater won me lots of Brownie points. I had no issue running it in the Kanga with a few zips cracked for ventilation. I'm very aware of the symptoms of CO poisoning and there was no issue with the way we did it. I think the instructions err on the side of ultracaution.

The kids have thermals which we put winter jarmies or tracksuits over if it's really cold as both of our kids wriggle out of their sleeping bags at night regardless of temp. They both liked wearing their polarfleece beanies to bed too.

Sleeping in bunks in the Kanga or on the ground in the tent they each have a Thermarest which insulates from below. They are worth their weight and then some in gold. When I go on trips alone I use one of the kids ones in my swag.

Hope this helps,

Dave