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Luckily there’s plenty of nature to explore wherever you go!
Whether you’re looking out a window, crawling around in your backyard, or taking a walk around your neighborhood, wildlife is everywhere.
Download a printer-friendly description of these scavenger hunts here: Scavenger Hunts & Nature Baskets
Scavenger Hunts & Nature Baskets
You never know what you’ll find!
A scavenger hunt or a nature basket can turn any walk around the block into an adventure!
Scavenger hunts can be as involved or as easy as you like. You can write or draw your own, print of one of ours, or just think of a new thing to look for every few minutes. A few of our favorites are listed below. If you come up with a new amazing hunt, please share it with us!
Remember, don’t collect living things, and be sure to return natural objects to where you found them.
Here’s an example of a simple scavenger hunt a parent drew. You can be as silly and creative as you like! This hunt has been converted to a printable PDF and is ready for you to download today.
Neighborhood Scavenger hunt - March/April
Like that picture of the hand-drawn scavenger hunt shown here? Download it here to make your next walk around the block more exciting.
Draw your own, or have your kids draw them for you!
Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt — March/April (seasonally appropriate)
Photo Scavenger Hunt
This is great for backyards! Take photos of small details or objects at the natural area you’re exploring. Arrange the photos in a grid on a piece of paper, and print it out (you could also just leave it on your phone and let kids scroll through while hunting).
Kids can then hunt for the items or textures pictured and mark them off when they have found them. For older kids, take more detailed and abstract pictures to make the scavenger hunt more interesting or difficult.
Egg Carton Scavenger Hunt
This nest would not fit in an egg carton, but it sure is cute!
Give each kid or team an egg carton and a list or twelve items to find. Some examples of things that could be on your list are: Find one natural item that is red, fragile, soft, spikey, wet, etc. They can share their findings at the end; you can read the list aloud and the kids can compare what they collected for each category.
Created by James Neill with adaptations from SoWBA
These Three Things Scavenger Hunt
This one is great for when you didn’t plan to need a scavenger hunt — you don’t need any supplies! We love it for helping tired hikers get back to the car too.
This bird isn’t flying or walking, and it’s definitely pretty still. Kiddos found lots of common nighthawk feathers while out on a nature walk.
Give kids three items to find, and once they find those items you can move on to the next list of three. Use your imagination when thinking of what they’ll be hunting for! Remember to change the things you ask them to find based on the location you’re at and the season you’re in.
Some suggestions to get you started:
A bird flying, walking, and standing still.
A bird will yellow on it, a bird with red on it, a bird with black on it.
A bird making noise, a bird preening (cleaning feathers), and a bird foraging (looking for food).
An animals’ home, sign of humans, sign of an animal.
An animal track, a human footprint, a sign of an animal that is NOT a footprint.
A living insect, a dead insect, sign of an insect.
A mammal, a reptile/amphibian, a bird
A green leaf, a fall-colored leaf, a leaf skeleton
A leaf eaten by an insect, a leaf with insect eggs on/in it, a leaf with a spider’s nest in it.
A bird nest, a squirrel nest, a hole in a tree that an animal might live in.
“W” for web or “F” for flies? You choose!
ABC Scavenger Hunt
Write the alphabet vertically down a sheet of paper. Find something in nature starting with every letter in the alphabet (you can bend this rule for the harder letters!)
Nature Baskets
Rocks, sticks, leaves, more rocks - it all goes into the nature basket.
Nature baskets go great with scavenger hunts. You can use a bucket, basket, or bag to collect the things you find on your nature walk. Grab something you already have, or make a new one. Small nature baskets are nice, because you can have a rule that kids may only carry things that fit inside it (that HUGE stick needs to stay where they found it!)
Just remember: nothing living goes in the nature basket, and everything needs to get returned to nature at the end of the trip. Also know that many plants contain seeds. It’s best if seeds stay in the place you found them to help keep our natural areas healthy.
Banner Photo: These kids aren’t practicing physical distancing, and neither is that bee. This was from back in 2018 though, when such things weren’t necessary. We’ll all be hanging in groups again before we know it! Photo credit: Carolyn Byers
