Everything You Need to Know About the Junior Ranger Program

I’ve been visiting national parks since I was 8 years old. What I didn’t realize, though, is that the national parks have this thing called a Junior Ranger Program. These are free resources for kids within many NPS-run lands that help get your kids excited about the outdoors and educate them! Although they’re typically geared for kids a little older than Charleigh, we decided not to miss out on the opportunity to teach her young with a little help from Mama and she became a Junior Ranger in Sequoia National Park for the first time in September. I’m hooked on this and wanted to shout from the rooftops about these amazing opportunities to help your kids fall in love with the outdoors and our public lands. 

QUICK INFO ON THE JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM

COST: The Junior Ranger Programs at each park or site are completely free!
WHAT IS THE AGE RANGE FOR THESE? NPS say that Junior Rangers typically are 5-13, but anyone, any age can complete the junior ranger books. Like, I said, Charleigh is just shy of 3, but with help, we’re already teaching her about the parks and filling out the books. 
TYPES OF ACTIVITIES IN THE JUNIOR RANGER BOOK: There are sensory activities, drawing activities, creative writing activities, matching activities and more. 
TIME IS TAKES TO COMPLETE: We dedicated about 2 hours to each book that we’ve done so far. We took a look in the book to see which activities we wanted to complete before setting out to explore so we knew what needed to be done. We filled out the book pages at night after exploring parks or for more historic sites we did them as we went, as the museumy type stuff doesn’t stick with her as well as the adventurey stuff.
ARE THERE PARKS THAT DON’T HAVE THE JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM? Yes, there are some parks that don’t have a Junior Ranger Badge, but there are over 300 different Junior Ranger Programs NPS-wide.

HOW TO BECOME A JUNIOR RANGER – NATIONAL PARK JUNIOR RANGER PROGRAM

When you visit a national park, monument or river, stop by the Visitor Center, some parks have more than one Visitor Center, and ask for a Junior Ranger book! Every single time I’ve asked for one, everyone is so sweet, so supportive and excited to see kids get excited about nature. When you pick up the Junior Ranger Book, they’ll let you know how many pages your little one(s) need to fill out to get their Junior Ranger Badge!

The activities in the handbook vary, as the Junior Ranger age range is typically 4-12, but we’ve started doing them with Charleigh at 2.5, with a little help from Mama reading aloud to her. There are matching puzzles, sensory activities, drawing prompts and more in each book that help your child dig deeper into the area that you’re in. 

Once you’ve completed the required number of activities, you simply take your kid’s Junior Ranger Handbook back to a Visitor Center and the Park Ranger will swear your little one in after going through their activities with them. It’s a really simple oath and then your little one gets a really sweet wooden Junior Ranger Badge. Charleigh is now the proud owner of three Junior Ranger Badges as of Dec. 2023 and we cannot wait to collect more for both her and for Liam when he gets a little older.

Super fun side note, all three rangers that have sworn Charleigh in, so far, have been women! That’s a huge girl-power moment and a beautiful example of women in a male dominated field!

If you don’t have enough time inside the park to complete your activity book, there is also a way to email your completed book in and while they can’t send you a wooden badge through the mail, they will send little gold sticker versions. The email for that is  junior_rangers@nps.gov.

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I am genuinely so in love with this program and I hope that all my readers with kids will take advantage of this amazing and FREE fun and educational opportunity in US National Parks, Memorials, Monuments and Rivers.

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