Is your kid’s birthday coming up and you are looking for ideas for their party? Or are you just thinking about ways to motivate your children to go out more? Maybe you just want to make your hikes with kids more interesting and fun. A simple scavenger hunt is always a great idea to keep kids busy while being outside. Children love having to look for things and getting brain teasers, and that way, time passes by super quickly. We want to share six of our favorite ideas for scavenger hunt games with you today.
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How to make a scavenger hunt fun?
You can organize a scavenger hunt for kids with a treasure at the end, plan some activities to make a day of hiking more interesting or even plan a scavenger hunt inside if need be, but the one thing all these have in common that you need great ideas for games to keep the kids entertained. There is quite a number of super fun scavenger hunt games for children that can make your outdoor time together really a blast.
We have collected 6 great ideas for scavenger hunt games with kids that you can easily prepare on the same day and that will make your scavenger hunt great fun. Additionally, your kids can even learn a thing or two while having fun.
Forest Bingo – our number one scavenger hunt game
Forest Bingo is such a great scavenger hunt game for kids as they get to explore on their own and can even learn something as they go along.
You can make your own or use a prepared one – check out our Forest Bingo FREE printable.
You can play it in different ways – the first one to have Bingo wins, the first one who gets 15 out of the 25 fields wins, or make it a group effort to find everything on the Bingo card. You can talk about where to find the animals, plants, and things on the card and learn about them – for example, bugs might be hiding under a rock, lichens grow on trees, pine cones can be found where pine trees grow.
Riddles and Brain Teasers
This is something my daughter really loves – posing riddles and brain teasers as fun scavenger hunt games. The right answer could unlock the next clue for your kids or allow you to give them directions, or they could just try to solve the riddles during your picnic so you have some quiet time with them busy – there are so many ways that riddles are great fun on a scavenger hunt.
Here is one example of a riddle my daughter and her friends loved at her birthday party:
A farmer has to cross a river in a canoe. He is with a sheep, a cabbage, and a wolve and can only take one animal or plant at a time. When the wolves stays alone with the sheep, he will eat it. When the sheep stays alone with the cabbage, it will eat it. How can he get everyone across without any casualties?
Do you know the answer? Please let me know in the comments, and if you need some pointers, I will help you out!
There are plenty of books with riddles that we use, one we particularly like is this one. It has many short ones, but sometimes that is just enough!
Messages in secret Code
What is more intriguing than a message in code during a fun scavenger hunt? Especially if you make a themed scavenger hunt for pirates or Halloween, this adds a special spice to it. There are many ways to code a message, depending on the age of your children. I use different coding methods every time, so it does not get boring. Last time I just flipped the alphabet – a was z, b was y, and so on and so on. It took them a while to crack it, but when they did, they were so proud. And it was a great way to practice the alphabet at the same time, so double win.
Filling the bottle – a messy but fun scavenger hunt game
This is a fun game for scavenger hunts that works best in summer. You hide a clue in a waterproof case in a bottle and tell the kids they cannot move the bottle but need to get the clue out. The only thing they can use is sponges. So, they have to find the next body of water and fill the bottle by bringing as much water as the sponges can carry. Be prepared for things to get wet and messy though – but all the more fun I would say.
Drop the egg
This is a game I learned at a team-building retreat that I went to when I was working for a big company – and it works in scavenger hunts as well. Give your kids an egg and a piece of string and tell them to package that egg up with all the natural materials they can find. Then, they have to drop it from a specific height – here in Germany we use high seats for hunting that you can find everywhere (see the picture).
If the egg does not crack, they win and get the next clue – if it cracks, you make an omelet that night… This is not only fun and helps them to learn problem-solving skills, it also teaches them about the structural integrity of an egg and will make them think about what they have at their disposal. So not only for adults, this is a scavenger hunt game that is great for team building and communication!
Build a bench
This one is also great to stimulate their problem-solving skills. Give them some string and just tell them: Build a bench that will hold you for 10 seconds out of everything you can find. It does not matter what it looks like or what they use, but they have to be able to sit on it with their feet off the ground for 10 seconds. The last time I used this with my daughter, she and her friend quickly came up with a workaround – they just stuck a stick between two trees, but it counted and they were super happy. It also still took some time, finding the stick, finding trees that would work, figuring out how to stick it in between. There is huge potential in this game and no bench will look like the next one!
These are six of our favorite scavenger hunt games! Please share yours in the comments and let us know how you go about your treasure hunts in the forest. If you try any of these, please tag us if you share pictures on social media – either on Facebook or Instagram! We would love to see your pictures!
Oh, and if you don’t have enough time to prepare a scavenger hunt from scratch, there are plenty of ideas for them that you can buy. Here is a game we really like and have used in the past. And if you are preparing for a birthday party, don’t miss our article with gift ideas for outdoorsy kids and families!