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  • FALL, GOOD FOR NATURE, INFORMATION, OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES

    Fall Scavenger Hunt

    Fall is the perfect time to get outside and explore with kids. Between the crisp cool air, the colorful leaves, and the abundance of nature treasures to be found, it’s peak season for a scavenger hunt! Today, Pennsylvania dad Matthew Marvich is here sharing how you can create your own DIY fall scavenger hunt for kids. Get them involved with the planning, let them help you brainstorm items to find and challenge them with a creative spin. Don’t want to make your own? We’ve even included a free simple printable fall scavenger hunt for your little ones.

    The thrill of fall weather

    Brisk mornings, warm sunlit afternoons, colorful landscapes, and shorter days; fall has officially arrived. All four seasons are adored for their unique qualities, but Fall may be top choice for some. There is something really special about time when you can feel the crispness of the air and those few weeks where the fall foliage is at its peak.

    Whether you’re driving on your normal commute or hiking through the woods those beautiful colors catch your eyes and warm up your soul. Those images stay in your memory and bring you joy to recall them. What if there was a way to capture those images and bring the season of Fall to life? What if you could tap into all your senses and experience Fall in a way you never have before? Have you ever wondered what types of outdoor activities you will do with your family during Fall? 

    Fall scavenger hunt for kids

    When the seasons change, so do our outdoor activities. One of our family’s favorite activities is a fall scavenger hunt. We love scavenger hunts anytime of year, but they’re particularly fun in the fall, as it’s just a wonderful time to be outside and observing nature. A scavenger hunt is a great way to make fall memories and identify the unique changes of the season with your family. Plus, scavenger hunts are easy enough for kids of all ages to do and adaptable so that you can do them anywhere!

    You even get to bring some of it home with you! My son loves to bring all kinds of things home with him from our outdoor adventures. We have quite a collection of rocks, sticks, and acorns so this is a perfect outdoor activity for us. This activity is flexible enough that you can tailor it towards your location and things your children love to search for.

    Fall Trees

    Getting your children involved in planning

    You might be asking, how do I even get started making my own fall scavenger hunt? Well, let’s begin with the basics!

    Once you have decided a fall scavenger hunt is your next fall activity, it is time to get your children involved. Ask them to help you brainstorm the items you will hunt for. This is a creative way to get your children excited about the scavenger hunt and thinking about the world around them. Trust me, they’ll come up with ideas you never thought to include that showcase what types of items are important to them.

    Depending on their age, you can either ask them to blurt out things that come to mind while you write them down, or let them create their own list of nature items to look for. When kids are involved in the planning of outdoor activities, they’re more likely to be interested and invested in them.

    Brainstorming the list of scavenger hunt finds

    The list of items to be hunted for can be as vast or simple as you want it to be. If your kids are older and want a challenge (or you’ll be outside for a substantial amount of time), make your list extensive. If your kids are little and have short attention spans, keep your list simple and short. Own your scavenger hunt and just have fun out there.

    Fall scavenger hunt items

    Our fall scavenger hunt list of items includes, but is not limited to:

    • leaves (red, yellow, orange, brown)
    • rocks
    • seeds (and seed pods, like milkweed)
    • trees
    • sticks
    • acorns
    • pinecones
    • pine needles
    • squirrels
    • apples
    • persimmon
    • birds
    • bird nests
    • birdhouses
    • cats
    • dogs
    • worms
    • beetles
    • pumpkins
    • mushrooms
    • lichen
    • butterflies
    • grasshoppers
    • feathers
    • spiders
    • bugs
    • slugs
    • snails
    • salamanders
    • animal tracks
    • fossils
    • buckeyes

    These are typical for us to see in Pennsylvania on a nature walk. Your fall scavenger hunt can include any/all of these, plus more items from your specific location. You can add variations to the list such as colors, shapes, sizes, etc. for each item as well. If your child is learning a certain color in school for that week, try to incorporate it as much as possible. If you want to work on your child’s ABC’s, have them find one item for each letter of the alphabet.

    Pinecones

    Get creative with how you implement your scavenger hunt

    Creativity is what will bring this activity to life! Your fall scavenger hunt list can be written out in list form or typed and printed out. If you child can’t read yet, you could use photos of clipart images. Give a copy of the scavenger hunt to your kids on a clipboard, so they can check items off as they hunt the items down. Or just store a list of items in your phone and find one item at a time. If you have older kids, give responsibility for their hunt to them with their own printed sheet, which helps establish independence.

    Collect (some of) your findings

    On our scavenger hunts, we also bring a bucket. This is great for collecting many of the items on your list. Not all the items on the list will fit or go in here (or should be touched or collected), but that’s okay. Items such as rocks, acorns, pinecones, etc. are fine to collect and take home and examine more closely. Items like mushrooms, bugs, slugs, animals, etc. should be left where they are and only observed.

    The bucket is a great idea if your scavenger hunt has them finding multiple variations of the same item (five acorns, three pinecones, 4 different color leaves) or if you’ll be collecting the items to use in nature crafts. For example, buckeyes (conkers) are great for making fun little animals and other art projects.

    Scavenger Hunt Bucket

    How to make your scavenger hunt more challenging

    Perhaps your children are older in age and competitive. The scavenger hunt could get very specific, even more detailed, or even timed. Instead of finding any rock, maybe the rock must be a certain color, texture, or shape. Leaves are abundant, but it may be difficult to find a red leaf with yellow circles on it. Get creative with your children and make it fun and challenging for them.

    My son is very keen to find things on the list so I have to make it a little more challenging for him. I try to use shapes and colors as the easiest way to add a little more spice to the hunt. If your children know specific leaves such as a maple leaf, then have them find a specific color maple leaf. He is only four years old but because we spend so much time in the woods, he knows where certain items would be easily found. Simple variations to the activity can go a long way in making it last long enough for everyone to enjoy it. 

    Challenge yourself to make the scavenger hunt more and more difficult as they become pros at it. There are so many possibilities to making this fun activity as engaging and challenging as you want. It could be as extreme as breaking up your nature area into quadrants where you have to find each item. Or, instead of specific items, you could choose more abstract concepts that require them to think more about what they’re looking for and get creative (something smooth, smelly, spiky, soft, wet, flat, old, crunchy). I truly believe this activity can be fun for everyone regardless of age and skill level. 

    Rocks

    What you need to go on a scavenger hunt

    Checklist time. Do you have your list(s)? Your bucket? Your nature location? What about your children? (Don’t forget them.) Then you are ready to get started!

    If your children are anything like mine, they will burst onto the scene with excitement and enthusiasm. That being said, let your children lead the way. You can follow along and help guide or nudge them towards certain directions. If you are in a familiar place then may know exactly where to go to find some of the items on the list. If you are in a new location then it may take a little longer to find everything. 

    Pineneedles

    What did you find?

    Once you’ve officially completed your scavenge hunt, it is time to review your findings. Find a good gathering spot for your family to see what everyone found. How did each kid do? Did everyone compete the list? Were some of the items not in your location? What challenges did you face along the way? Make a mental note of what was hard/easy for your kids so you know how to adjust next time.

    Fall Colors

    Learn to love nature through a scavenger hunt

    Doing a fall scavenger hunt with your children is a chance to let them embrace discovery. If you are new to outdoor activities then your children are really going to love this activity. And if you’re avid nature lovers like we are, you will enjoy seeing the changes that take place during the fall and appreciate nature even more through this fun activity. This scavenger hunt is designed to inspire observation, creativity, and embrace the outdoors. My hope is that you won’t just walk through nature, but learn from it, and learn to love it.

    Outdoor activities are meant to have you engage with nature. Nature’s playground offers us many opportunities to connect on a deeper level. We visit many different outdoor locations where we live and every time we go back, something is different. We notice. When fall is in full swing, that place you visited in summer will look completely different. Sometimes it is eye opening how vastly different one location can change in just three to four months. Kids notice, too. And by letting them observe and explore nature up close, it strengthens their bond with our planet and all it has to offer.

    Fall Leaves

    Free printable fall scavenger hunt for kids

    We’ve shown you how to create you own fall scavenger hunt with kids. And hopefully you realize just how fun and easy it can be! However, if you don’t have the time to create your own or if want a good place to start with little kids, we’ve got you covered. Click here to get out free printable fall scavenger hunt for kids.

    Are you a fan of scavenger hunts?

    About the author

    Matthew is a loving father to one nature-seeking son. They live in western Pennsylvania and focus on visiting every trail, waterfall, and scenic view they can find. He works full-time and his son is in preschool. They are adventure enthusiasts who love to hike, travel and learn everything they can about nature. Matthew grew up loving outdoor play and adventures so he has become intentional about displaying that love for his son to emulate. He focuses on creating and capturing moments that they experience together through photos and writing in a journal to one day give to his son about their journeys together.

    You can find more from Tine online in the following locations:
    Instagram: @matthew_marvich
    RWMC posts: Matthew Marvich

  • OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES, PRINTABLES

    Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt

    Kids need adventures, but not every outdoor adventure needs to be deep in the woods, on a mountainside, or next to a river. While those types of adventures are great, adventures can also be found in your own backyard or while exploring your street. We realize that not everyone has easy access to trout streams or acres of wooded areas, but that doesn’t mean that kids can’t observe and connect with the nature that’s around them, wherever they may be.

    Printable Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt for Kids - This is great for kids of all ages!

    As much as I love unstructured imagination play, sometimes kids (especially young ones) need a little encouragement to connect with nature and explore – they need some (loosely) structured activity to get them engaged. One of my favorite ways to get my kids to be more observant of their surroundings, particularly on days when we can’t leave the city, is to send them on a neighborhood scavenger hunt.

    Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt for kidsNeighborhood Scavenger Hunt for preschoolersNeighborhood scavenger hunt

    A few years ago I developed this fun Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt printable for my son. He was 2 years-old when our daughter was born and those first few months having a newborn and a wild toddler were hard. They were both happiest when we were outside, so we took a LOT of walks around the neighborhood. Eventually that started to get really boring for him, so I put together a scavenger hunt to make going on a short walk down our street fun and interesting for him. Nearly three years later, we’re still using this exact same scavenger hunt to explore our neighborhood, the surrounding streets and local parks.

    Easy to find items

    The items on our scavenger hunt are all things a kid should be able to find in any suburban neighborhood or park (with a little help from an adult if your kids are small).  Our scavenger hunt contains a mix of natural items (butterfly, spider web, pinecones) with a number of “neighborhood” items (stop sign, truck, bricks), which makes it versatile for a variety of areas. If you’re in a super urban big city, start at home and play while going to a local park. There are 48 items on the list, both with pictures and words (for kids too young to read), which means 4 pages of fun. My kids have never really had the time (or attention span) to find all the items at once. Sometimes we try to find the things on one page together as a team. Sometimes we only find a few items on each page. And sometimes we get completely distracted and end up doing something else entirely…that’s fine too! This is just a starting point to get them outside and exploring, which is really the important part of this activity.

    Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt for kidsNeighborhood Scavenger Hunt for preschoolersNever the same game 

    The great thing about this scavenger hunt is that it works well in the city, the suburbs and in parks (even small ones). It’s a great outdoor activity for all you parents that mentioned that you’re not super “outdoorsy” but want ideas for getting your kids outside. Plus, this is something your kids can play multiple times and never have the same experience twice – it’s always changing. Even though the items you have to find remain constant and your street probably doesn’t change dramatically, nature and your surroundings change with the seasons and the places you find flowers or bugs during the spring will not be the same places you find those items in the fall.

    Some of the items in the scavenger hunt are harder to find during certain seasons. If we do the scavenger hunt during the winter, we don’t find any dandelions, pink flowers or butterflies. But that really doesn’t really seem to bother my kids at all.  It’s more about the exploring and the adventure of the hunt that makes it fun for them. Kids like doing things they’ve done before, so once you do this scavenger hunt with them, they’ll love doing the same familiar activity in a new location or during a new season. It also grows with your kids and can be used for many ages – toddlers and preschoolers will need some guidance and coaching from parents, but school-aged kids will love leading the exploration on their own.

    Free Neighborhood Scavenger HuntFun Kids Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt Watch and observe your kids

    While the kids love hunting for the items on the list, I love watching them and observing how they play the game. What surprised me most was that some of the items on the scavenger hunt that were easy for the kids to find were less fun for them.  While I thought they might really enjoy checking some easy items off their list right away, finding rocks or sticks or leaves was so easy for them that it wasn’t as exciting as finding something that we had to really hunt for.  Even at 2 years-old, my son spent a lot of time digging in the flower bed in February for a roly-poly. We also sat at the end of our street for a good 10 minutes watching cars drive by and waiting for a red truck. We never found either one, but he didn’t mind.  This showed incredible patience and determination from him that completely impressed me and in the meantime we spent that time talking and connecting and being a part of something fun together.

    Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt for toddlers Free Printable Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt Four pages of fun

    The printable contains 4 pages of items to find, ranging from squirrel sightings to stop signs and bird nests. Depending on how ambitious you want to be, your kid can do all four pages or you can split them up into multiple hunts. If you have multiple kids, you can give them all the same pages or divide them up so they each kid has their own items to find. I recommend you give them each a marker to cross off the items they find, which gives them a huge sense of accomplishment. (Who doesn’t love checking something off their to-do list!) If you’ve got competitive kids, turn it into a game with a prize (first person to find all the items on their page wins) or just go out and see how many items you can find together as a team effort. There are so many different ways to play and you can mix it up each time.

    printable free fun Scavenger Hunt Suburbs Neighborhood Scavenger HuntNature Scavenger Hunt for kids Download our free printable

    Here’s the link to the free downloadable printable Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt. We hope that you love it and get as much use out of it as we do. This is a (at least) once-a-month activity around our house and is perfect for killing that hour of time after work and before dinner prep begins. It encourages kids to get outside to explore, be observant of their surroundings, appreciate nature. Hopefully you can play this with your kids and use it as a starting point to explore your everyday areas and get them to see their outside surroundings in a new way.
    Nature Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt for kids printable

    Have you ever done a scavenger hunt with your kids?