Field Trip Ideas: Scavenger Hunt

My friend Nanda recently reminded me of a fun way to make field trips more entertaining — scavenger hunts! For our trip to a local air park last week, Nanda had pulled together descriptions of several airplanes we would see at the park. The children had to find the planes described, for example a silver plane with red seats or a plane with a star. Once they checked all the boxes, they turned their paper into Nanda, who had brought little gliders as prizes. Brilliant!

The next day, I took my boys to a local zoo. I decided to try another scavenger hunt. Because my three-year-old doesn’t read yet, I decided to use pictures of the various animals we would see for the scavenger hunt. I found these easily on the internet and pasted them into a Word document.  I also left space for us to write down the animals’ names and where they could be found, so we could use our globe when we got home to find their habitats.

The boys definitely paid more attention to the animals when we were forced to read the information and look carefully for the various animals. Hooray for scavenger hunts!