Spring is finally here! As the weather is starting to get warmer, my kids and I have been wanting to spend more time outside after school and on the weekends. So, I have been trying to come up with fun activities to do with them outdoors.
I want something that will keep them moving and keep them occupied for a little while. So, this activity I found is perfect.
How many of you remember doing scavenger hunts when you were younger? I know I did and I loved them. I might’ve only been searching for mundane items in my backyard, but to me it felt like I was looking for treasure.
I wanted to recreate this for my kids, but shake it up a little bit. That’s when I read about nature scavenger hunts. These are hunts that use color, nature and texture. So, looking for something soft like moss, something brown like a bird feather and something bumpy like tree bark.
I love this take on a typical scavenger hunt because it makes my kids take a closer look at the nature that surrounds them. They can find all the little, beautiful things that nature has to offer right in our backyard — some things they might not have noticed before.
When I was making my DIY scavenger hunt sheet, I kept in mind that I wanted my kids to collect their found items and put them in a basket so at the end they could see all of the fun nature things they found. So, I didn’t put things on the sheet like “squirrel” or “bird” because they couldn’t put those in their basket. But if you aren’t collecting the items as you go, then you could definitely include items like insects, birds, water, etc.
I picked eight things to fill the scavenger hunt list: something green, something yellow, a leaf, a pinecone, something soft, something bumpy, something round, a leaf and something small.
Now, my kids are still under age 6, so I intentionally made this pretty easy for them, but you could make it more challenging depending on your child’s age.
This is an activity that I think my kids will love to do all spring and summer. It gets them outside, gets them moving and gets them using their creativity! What more could you ask for?
Oh, and it costs nothing. So, that’s a win-win in my book! Happy hunting!
ANN BURNS is a Morgantown native, raising two young children with her husband, Drake. She writes weekly columns for The Dominion Post. Contact her at Columns@DominionPost.com.
