President joins singing circle as first lady Michelle Obama hosts 50 girls to promote active childhood and mark 100 years of National Park Service

Some lucky Girl Scouts got what might be the ultimate camping experience on Tuesday: an overnight sleepout in tents pitched on the White House South Lawn.

It was the first time one of the country’s most well-known expanses of manicured grass had been turned into a campground, an excited Michelle Obama said as she greeted the 50 Girl Scouts who were invited to the outdoor sleepover.

“This is something you can tell your kids and your grandkids,” said the first lady, who pointed excitedly to the celebrated white building looming above rows of carefully arranged blue and white tents. “Do you understand the impact, the importance of this moment today? It’s exciting.”

As honorary national president of the Girl Scouts the first lady welcomed the group for an evening arranged as part of her Let’s Move initiative against childhood obesity. One part of the program encourages kids and their families to take advantage of the outdoors.

The campout was co-sponsored by the interior department and celebrates the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service. The White House is a national park.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Girl Scouts and the Obamas form a singing circle with the White House in the background. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

The group, representing Girl Scout councils in Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington DC and Oklahoma, spent the afternoon climbing a rock wall, tying knots, pitching tents and participating in orienteering exercises to earn a new outdoor badge.



After dark they sang songs and gazed up at the stars under instruction from Nasa staff and scientists, including astronaut Cady Coleman, before calling it a night and settling into sleeping bags inside their two-person tents. About 20 chaperones were also spending the night outside.

The White House declined to say whether the first lady would trade her second-floor bedroom for a tent too.

At one point the scouts squealed upon realising that the president was approaching their singing circle, accompanied by the first lady.

“What are you guys doing in my yard?” he said, before taking a seat on a haybale. “When did you guys show up here?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barack Obama fields a group hug from some of the Girl Scouts. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/EPA

Obama said his tents weren’t as nice and his chairs weren’t as cool when he went camping as a boy. He clapped and swayed to music from a guitar player as the girls sang, seated in a circle around lanterns that took the place of what ordinarily would be a roaring campfire.

The girls swarmed him when, asked for a hug, he suggested a group hug instead.

“You guys aren’t going to be making a racket are you?” he said, before leaving and returning for a quick look at Saturn through a Nasa telescope.

Michelle Obama, who was not a Girl Scout, said she didn’t know if she could “officially earn a badge but I want to try.”

“I don’t know anything. I don’t know how to tie a knot. I don’t know how to pitch a tent,” she said, before drawing a proverbial line against one of their activities. “I’m definitely not climbing that wall.”

She did, however, master the art of tying the overhand knot and the square knot.