Keeping the nieces and nephews interested in museums, shopping trips or rained out play days can be pretty difficult. Organizing a scavenger hunt for them is a fun activity that any Savvy Auntie can do. The adventure can be for birthdays, holidays, general outings or just for plain old fun.
 
You can organize a visual or physical scavenger hunt. For a visual hunt, you need to make a list or photo list for the kids to check off, depending on the ages of the children. If you are a creative auntie, you could even make the lists look like Bingo cards, and you can decide if the “winner” has to get all of them for a “bingo.”

Visual Scavenger Hunts

If you want to do a visual scavenger hunt, go to a local museum or a children's museum. Most museums will have a list of their popular pieces you can use. You can also create your own list of pictures to find: a woman in a red dress, a man in a hat, or a painting with at least three dogs. This is a good way to get children involved in an educational setting.

Heading to the mall? Keep the kids interested by having them look for a list of objects. You can use sights such as fountains, sale signs, a baby, and other things you find at a public shopping arena.

On a car or train trip, the list can be a little longer, depending on the length of the drive. What kinds of things do you see while traveling? Anything beats the old “punch buggy” game!

Physical Scavenger Hunts

For a physical scavenger hunt, make up a list of things for the kids to find or hide their holiday or birthday presents. You can do a hunt in your home, a backyard, their home, or a local park.

If you go somewhere like a park, the items on the list can be reminiscent of the TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal.” Some items to find could be a flat rock, a leaf, a pink flower petal, just to name a few possibilities.

In a house, add items such as a yellow book, a brown shoe, a home magazine, a large spoon, a CD with a certain color on the cover, or a vegetable. Provide a list and a bag for each child. Depending on the child's age, you may want to include pictures of the items. Set a timer or play a fun song and see who could find the most first.
 
These kinds of scavenger hunts can become learning experiences. If your nieces or nephews are having issues with math or spelling, have them do a simple math problem or spell a word to get a clue. Or they have to find a fruit that grows on a tree or a vegetable that grows underground. Younger children can strengthen their skills on learning colors, shapes and sizes.

Here’s a heads up. If you do a scavenger hunt in your own home, clearly communicate what areas are off limits. You don’t want to have to worry about broken valuable—or explain something they may not be ready to understand. For safety purposes, keep them out of the medicine cabinets and cleaning supply stashes.

For holidays and birthdays, having the kids look for their presents can make it more fun for them. This past Christmas, I hid my 10-year-old niece's presents. I gave her a box with a note saying the gifts were hidden by Auntie Claus, and she needed to find them. The clues I gave her fairly simple, saying "Look in the file cabinet," (but which file cabinet?) and "Look in a closet." Each gift had a clue leading to the next one. Some of the "presents" were items I found in my parents' house, such as jelly beans, an orange, and cookies.
 
Savvy Aunties with poetic leanings can write a few lines of verse as the clues. The complexity of clues depends on the child's age and how easily they're frustrated. For older children, make the clues a little more cryptic. Think less "Lost" and "Flash Forward" and more "Harry Potter" and “39 Clues.”

Organizing a scavenger hunt of any kind is much more fun to organize than your sock drawer. Go have some fun, auntie!

By Janice Marie Simon, MA, CPO