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3-Minute Guru


Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Make summer interesting with scavenger hunts

BY KAREN DEERWESTER

School's almost out. Caution: long days of summer ahead. Creative parenting always involves capturing your child's imagination and attention. Use scavenger hunts to keep your child happy through the long days of summer: indoors, outside, in cars and planes, at the mall or in long lines at the theme park.

Scavenger hKaren Deerwester.unts are time-tested, kid-friendly play-adventures. They can distract the travel weary, focus kids' attention for new experiences, add mystery to everyday ordinary, increase attention to details and cultivate sensory awareness to sights, sounds and experiences. (The Scavenger Hunt Guru has unlimited ideas for every possible scavenger hunt). 

Here are a few suggestions for how to use scavenger hunts with your little ones this summer.

In the house
  •     Think number of objects - 5 hard things - 5 soft things, 12 things that start with the letter __.
  •     Think colors - something blue from every room, 10 red objects that will fit in a backpack, something for every color in the rainbow.
  •     Think imagination - 15 things an astronaut should take in a spaceship.

Outside
  •     Nine leaves in different sizes from smallest to largest - different shapes, colors.
  •     Six things mentioned in story books or fairy tales - for example: a bean stalk, a rose, an ugly duckling feather, a flower pot, a sea shell.
  •     Take pictures of homes of 5 animals or bugs.

In cars or planes
  •     Search for letters on signs or famous brands and logos.
  •     Search for people wearing different kinds of clothes or hair styles, speaking different languages or saying a magic word like "coffee," or in different kinds of moods (happy, sad, angry, nervous, busy, relaxed).
  •     Collect receipts until you have the complete sequence starting with $1 up to $9.

At the mall
  •     Set a shopping challenge - find the ugliest socks, the prettiest party dress, the most expensive chocolate, what not to buy for grandma's birthday.
  •     Search for things with wheels - 4 strollers, 2 double strollers, 1 jogging stroller, 2 wheelchairs, 3 skateboards, with extra points if kids are carrying skateboards.
  •     Pretend shop - make lists or take pictures in July for family Christmas gifts to review in September.

Waiting in theme park line
  •     Find lines with more people wearing sneakers than sandals, most number of kids with hats in a line, guess how many kids will have tantrums while waiting in line.
  •     Take pictures of different kinds of shoes - red shoes, shoes with laces, shoes with sparkles, brand new shoes, most uncomfortable looking shoes, and the hardest to find of all - mismatched shoes.
  •     Find different sequences of boy-girl pattern in lines - alternating boy-girl, boy-boy-girl-girl, highest number of boys in a row, highest number of girls in a row.

That's barely a beginning of scavenger hunt ideas. Turn on your "scavenger hunt brain" and look for new ways to avoid hearing "I'm bored!" this summer.


Karen Deerwester is the author of "The Entitlement-Free Child" and "The Potty Training Answer Book" and the owner of Family Time Coaching and Consulting. She offers one-on-one parent coaching, as well as classes and seminars. She is also Mommy & Me director at B'Nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, where she works with mothers, infants and toddlers through age 2. Get more information about B'Nai Torah's early childhood education program here. Visit the Family Time website and follow Karen on Twitter @FamilyTimeInc.