Get Outside on a Preschooler Scavenger Hunt

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Scavenger hunts hold fond childhood memories for me. There was a yearly scavenger hunt in the city I grew up in. Every day there would be a new clue about its location in the newspaper. My mom and I would always go look for it. A couple years we were really close, but we never found it before someone else did. I have wanted to do something similar for my kids, but my oldest is only three years old. She isn’t old enough to solve a riddle even if I did read everything aloud to her. This gave me the idea to do a picture preschooler scavenger hunt.

My daughter has been playing with a dry erase search and find book a lot and it has actually helped her get better at looking for things. She still sometimes does the classic kid give up if she can’t immediately find it, but she is getting better. This made me confident that she would enjoy a picture based scavenger hunt outside. We did it in our back and front yards, but you could do this wherever. You could do it at a favorite park, a local bike trail, or inside your house. It works anywhere that you can take pictures beforehand and then hide things without your kids watching.

How to Make a Picture Based Preschooler Scavenger Hunt:

Materials:

• Cardstock (or regular printer paper)
• Laminator (optional)

Making the Clues:

To start, I went outside and started taking pictures. I took pictures of things that my daughter would be familiar with. So I took one by her swing set, her sand box, the pinwheel we just made, an obvious tree, etc. I tried to take pictures of larger areas, so still had a medium sized area to search.

Then, I printed out all the pictures in wallet size on cardstock. If you have a Windows computer the easiest way to do this is to select all the pictures. Then you can right click, select print, and change the size to wallet size.

Next, I cut them all out and laminated them. They don’t need laminated, but I had a feeling my daughter was going to want to do this hunt several times. Being laminated also let me put the picture clues anywhere and not have to worry about the dew on the grass or anything like that. It definitely came in handy when my one year old decided to take them for a swim in the water table. After laminating the pictures, I cut them out again and they were ready to go.

Making the Scavenger Hunt:

Then, it was time to hide the clues for the hunt. I put the first picture I wanted to give her in my pocket. Then, I hid the next one where the picture in my pocket showed. I kept hiding the next picture where the previous picture showed. Eventually, I was at the place the last hidden picture showed and I hid candy there. I tried to pick hiding places that were near whatever was in the picture but not necessarily right on it.

Outcome of my Preschooler Scavenger Hunt:

If you have read enough of my other posts, you know that I am honest when something doesn’t work out as planned. So believe me when I say this was a huge success! My daughter would get a picture, say what was in it, and immediately march in that direction. The first time we did the hunt, I made it a little too easy. She found most of the picture clues very quickly.

Of course my daughter asked to do another hunt the next morning. We did it again, but used stickers as the treasure at the end instead of candy. This time I made it a little too hard, but she still had a blast. To repeat the hunt, I hid the pictures in a different order and in different places within the same area. I think we will be able to do it quite a few times before we need to take pictures of new places. My daughter has since asked to do it again several times, but the weather hasn’t cooperated.

Overall, I would say that this preschooler scavenger hunt was a wild success. I did try to get my 16 month old to do some of the more obvious ones. He would head in the right direction towards things like his sandbox, but then get distracted. I think in just a few months he will be able to participate too. We also did a sandbox seashell treasure hunt for my daughter’s birthday that both of them enjoyed. So, if you have a younger child like my son, you might want to try that for now. Do you think your kids would enjoy doing a scavenger hunt like this?