How to make a nature scavenger hunt

Yesterday we went to a birthday party, and as I was getting ready for it I saw the coolest idea for a present on Cool Mom Picks (where I love to go and see the cool ideas and enter contests). A Mom on Etsy had come up with the idea of playground Scavenger hunt cards (Future Ticia here, 10 years later, I don’t see that one still on Etsy).

(There are affiliate links in here)

She sold them for $16, but I figured out how to make a local version on my own. And let me tell you, from what I saw of her product I don’t really think she was overcharging, but the party was that afternoon, and so I improvised.

Here are my 15 items for the Playground Scavenger Hunt:

My list is just a starting point, but it gives you some fun ideas to think about.

1. squirrel
2. bird
3. smooth rock
4. sharp rock
5. a bug
6. an acorn
7. dirt or sand
8. twig
9. a feather
10. a pretty weed (so they don’t pick a flower)
11. a dry leaf
12. seeds
13. a clover
14. an oak leaf
15. a lost toy

How I put together my playground scavenger hunt

First I went to Google images and looked for pictures of my items and copied them into a word file and printed it off on normal paper.

Next I got index cards and let the kids glue one picture on each card.

Then I wrote what you were supposed to find next to each picture. If your kids can write they can do this step too. The kids then colored the other side, because they wanted to.

While they did that I made a really quick and easy bag to gather items in (obviously you’re not gathering the bugs or animals….).

Then we took them to a local teacher supply store, laminated them, cut them out again, and tied them up with a pretty ribbon. Once she understood what it was the birthday girl was excited, and her brother and sister were very excited.

I’m thinking of making some for each of the parks we go to all the time as an extra activity while we’re there. I’m also thinking of making mini-scavenger hunts for our house of items we need to clean up all the time. This is what I did last night instead of falling asleep, I thought of all the fun ways I could rework this activity.