Botanical Garden Scavenger Hunt

 

My mother-in-law loves botanical gardens, and I have to admit I enjoy going to them also, they’re just so peaceful and calm.  Kids however don’t necessarily want to look at endless plants all day long.  My kids enjoy running around and creating their own adventures, but I also want to work on their observational skills.

 

So last time we went there as my kids were climbing on the butterfly chairs and exploring the fossil garden, I took pictures.  A lot of pictures, not quite as many as I really needed to make a good botanical garden scavenger hunt (or at least not several ones….), but many many pictures.

And not of flowers, I wanted this botanical garden scavenger hunt to be evergreen.  If I took pictures of flowers, when we come back in 2 months they won’t be able to find a thing.  Instead I took pictures of the footprints, and the buildings.  I took pictures of rocks.  Small details that are by the flowers.

Then I popped over to picmonkey and made a collage using one of their “square deal” frames.  I chose 3×3 because it let me make a wider variety, but you could obviously increase the numbers with older kids, and make the pictures more difficult.

 

Then I made about 10 “Zilker Botanical Garden scavenger hunt pictures” all thrown into a word doc and saved so I can print them out.

 

So, this Friday when we go there on a field trip with friends, I’ll hand out a copy of my “Zilker Botanical garden scavenger hunt” to each of the kids (yes I am having fun making it sound ridiculously official).  I’ll probably laminate them and do it with dry erase markers, and then let them trade around.

 

I think it will be popular what about you?  Have you ever made anything like this?  I had a theory of doing this once before when the kids were younger, but it was much harder to put together in the days before picmonkey.

 

 

Let’s see what others did this week:

Each week I’m spotlighting a few posts that were shared previously.  Many posts get linked up later in the week and they don’t always get as many clicks as they deserve, so I’m trying to spotlight a few every week.

Piwi Princess shared a fun idea for Earth Day, helping Monarch butterflies.  Attempting to cultivate milkweed in my backyard has been on my to do list for a very long time.

 

I love the idea of knowing the science behind what you cook, and Angellic Scalliwags shares a great post: experimenting with your cooking ingredients.  Any post that ends in baked bread gets an A+ from me.

 

Fantastic Fun and Learning shared a couple of posts (and they’re all linked together in the post I’m sharing) about her seed study.  If your kids aren’t in preschool you should still check it out, because it’s a great study for elementary kids as well.

 

And finally Navigating by Joy shared their ice cream in a bag experiment.  I like the addition of gloves.  Our attempt at it a few years ago didn’t go nearly so well as theirs did.

 

Now, link up, visit and comment at a few other posts linked up (we all enjoy some comments).  Don’t forget to include a link back here on your sidebar or on your post so everyone can find their way to the other links.

 

 

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