Day 16: Outdoor Scavenger Hunt @ Home

 {If you're just now following us and curious about what we're doing, check out our prior "31 Days of Play" posts.}

I am always trying to find fun ways to explore nature with my kids, so I was excited when I found this idea for an outdoor scavenger hunt on Simple Homemade recently. However, I knew giving my 3 1/2-year-old and 21-month-old a written list of items to search for would not work. So, I opted for making a visual list of familiar outdoor items including plants, trees, flowers, and other natural features for a toddler-and preschooler-friendly outdoor scavenger hunt.

Here's a small glimpse of what I came up with, followed by instructions for how you can create your own scavenger hunt:

Scavenger Hunt @ Home

Instructions

1. Take some pictures of natural objects outside your home {alternatively, go to a local park or nature preserve}. Consider the age of your children in your selection. {My almost 4-year-old can distinguish between different tree leaves and barks; whereas, the almost 2-year-old can not. So, I threw in some easier pictures for her to find.} Also, I used 15 pictures for our kids. You might want to use more or less depending on the ages of your children and their familiarity with the natural objects in their backyard.

2. Edit your images. I used free and super-simple PicMonkey to enlarge and crop my images. I also added numbers to give order to our hunt. I ordered my pictures according to the location of the images in our yard, but for older kids, you could mix up the ordering to make it more challenging for them.

3. Print. Then, print out your images in color. You could use card stock paper, but I simply used regular white copy paper. 

4. Explore. Head outside with your paper list, and have fun with your kids finding the objects in your own yard. If you want, elicit any knowledge you might have about the plant, tree, or flower to your child, but keep it light and fun! We're enjoying nature, not having a botany lesson.

5. Offer a prize {optional}. I like incentives and so do my kids, so I offered the girls a prize if they could find all 15 items pictured on their list. Jellybeans for everyone!! Yea!!

 

 Even Dad was involved in the scavenger hunt!

 Kate celebrating after finding the hackberry tree pictured on the list

 Cora pointing to the rock she found

Kate with a Queen Anne's Lace--another item on the scavenger hunt list

An outdoor scavenger hunt is a simple but enjoyable way to explore nature with your kids, and the great thing is that you don't have to leave your house to do it! 

Have you ever created a visual scavenger hunt for your kids?  What did you do?

Thanks for joining me in our 16th day of "31 Days of Play"-- a challenge to play more with our kids!

Blessings to you!

Keri

For comments or questions, contact me at: growinginhisglory@gmail.com

Find Growing in His Glory on Facebook.

I would love to see more of you!  If you are encouraged by what you read here and would like to have posts from Growing in His Glory delivered to your inbox daily, simply click here.  Or you can subscribe in a reader of your choice in the right sidebar.

 

This post may be linked to: The Better Mom Mondays, Monday Mom Musings, Raising Arrows Welcome Home, Teach Me Tuesdays, Domestically Divine Tuesdays, Time-Warp Wife Titus 2Days, Encourage One Another, Top 10 Tuesdays, Loving Our Children Tuesdays, Women Living Well Wednesdays, Raising Homemakers Wednesdays, Works for Me Wednesdays, Raising Mighty Arrows Proverbs 31 Thursdays, Beautiful Thursdays, Hearts 4 Home, Faithfully Parenting Fridays