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How often do you hear “I’m bored!” from your kids? Scavenger hunts are a creative way to cure that boredom and keep kids busy. Kids of all ages enjoy scavenger hunts, which can be made very simple for younger children or very tricky to keep older kids entertained. They don’t take a great deal of planning – unless you want to plan a detailed and complex hunt – and can even be started on a moment’s notice.

Older kids can have an added element to their hunt if you provide hints only rather than a list of items to find. Figuring out the ‘clues’ and deciding what to hunt for can be a big part of the fun!

The first choice to make is to determine where to hold your hunt. The location of the hunt determines what you can hunt for. The best type of hunt is a nature hunt. Have children look for nature elements, and hold the hunt in your backyard or park. You don’t want kids picking up garbage or wandering away from your supervision to go on the hunt.

One important element for a nature scavenger hunt is the nature reminder or lesson. Children should be reminded that the hunt is fun, but should not cause harm to nature. They need to remember to be careful, and to only take items from the ground. Children may worry that they won’t be able to find the items with this rule; explain that there will be plenty of items on the ground that will let them complete the hunt. Choose items that can be found on the ground, such as:

Leaves of specific shapes or colors or types. Unique rocks, you can specify these by size or shape or color also. Moss, pinecones, twigs. Small insects that crawl and are not harmful – ladybugs are good, bees are not.

You don’t have to go into nature for a successful scavenger hunt, however. You can spent a bit of time and a small amount of money in a dollar store and host a theme hunt in your home.

Kids also love to hunt for hidden treasure. Consider getting some chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil, and hiding these as the prize to find. Another option is to have kids hunt for clues, in a secret mission themed hunt.

You can even expand the hunt to include items found in the homes of neighbors, if you know the neighbors well and the kids are old enough. Kids might hunt for items such as a cinnamon stick, or a penny from a specified year. Make it fun, challenging but not impossible, and not costly. Regardless of your chosen theme, you can figure that a scavenger hunt will entertain most kids for at least an hour, probably more.

In addition to entertaining activities, this author additionally regularly contributes articles about free small business bookkeeping software and small business inventory software.

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