Scavenger hunts are a wonderful way to spend time with your family. They are not only fun, but they can also be great opportunities for children, youth and adults to learn important life lessons and life-skills. They are great as a stand alone event or as part of the entertainment for a party or holiday celebration. Depending on the rules, they can be highly competitive or encourage cooperation and teamwork toward a common goal. Scavenger hunts can help youth learn or test their common knowledge on subjects, improve navigation skills, enhance their problem solving ability, and provide a great many other benefits and educational opportunities.

Types of Family Scavenger Hunts

When deciding what you want to do for a youth scavenger hunt the first thing you want to decide is what type of scavenger hunt you want. Scavenger hunts can involve looking for items or clues and can contain props and equipment like a compass and maps. There are also photo scavenger hunts, sound scavenger hunts, video hunts, “amazing race” type hunts, and many more variations.

Treasure Hunts for the Family

One of the most popular types of scavenger hunts for youth happens to be those which use detailed maps and in which simple clues are used to find special locations. Sometimes the clues will lead you to items at the location that either are clues themselves or have clues stuck to them. Sometimes challenges will be included at some of those locations before they can receive the clue leading to the next location. Prizes can also be awarded in scavenger hunts in order to keep the interest of the participants, and keep them motivated. Prizes can include: Gift Cards, Movie Tickets, and themed gift baskets.

Setting up a “Pirate Treasure Hunt” for your Family

Here’s a simplified example of a treasure hunt using a “Pirate’s Treasure Hunt” theme. Start with a pirate map letting everyone know the boundaries of the hunt. In this example, the youth’s house is the primary location for the scavenger hunt. You will need a compass for each team of youth because compasses are what pirates used. Use descriptive language and a little creativity to bring your maps alive. The bathtub and mirror becomes a “mirrored lake” or “mirrored sea.” The hall becomes the “middle passage”. A door or window is described as a “portal.” Any place with plants becomes a “garden.” The closet becomes the “stores.” A shoe closet becomes the “foot locker.” You can also include the “North room”, a “central chamber,” “the Den”, “Next to the Sleeping Princess” and others.

Clues for a “Pirate Treasure Hunt”

First Clue: Fill your bath tub with a little water, and put a toy boat floating in the water. If you have a shower curtain, pull the shower curtain shut so that the boat is concealed. Place a clue on the wall behind the shower curtain which will be concealed unless someone opens the shower curtain to find the next clue. The hint leading to this ship should be: Find a pirate ship sailing in water or in more descriptive and thematic terms “Find the pirate ship sailing upon the mirrored sea.”

Second clue: On the wall behind the shower curtain you will to put something like: “Head west 6 feet then make your way north to the rocky road.” (This would lead the youth outside the home) “Then continue to the Green Parrot’s waterfall.”

Third Clue: The waterfall would be near a rock by a fountain outside, which is also used as a bird bath. The next clue would be something like “travel 6 feet west and through the portal to find the sea.” “When you find the sea, walk north until you hit the dead end.” This would then lead the hunters back into my home to a picture which has dolphins on my wall. When you head north you will walk directly into a broom closet.

Putting It All Together

Of course there could be many more clues and the clues could be much more difficult. Sometimes riddles are also used to make the scavenger hunt even more difficult. But in this simple example, you can imagine how much fun the youth can have as they are forced to work together and decipher the meaning of the clues.

With a little imagination, creating scavenger hunts for youth can be almost as much fun as playing them. If you are interested in creating one of these scavenger hunts cheek out my eBook below for a variety of ideas, themes and even riddles to help you get started.

Creative Scavenger Hunts: Once Lost, Now Found

is a 160 page e-book that explains everything you need to know to easily plan your very own scavenger hunt: Item Lists, Rules, Riddles, Safety Tips, Guidelines, Scoring, Tips for Facilitators and MORE! There are more than 50 complete ideas (scavenger hunts, photo hunts, video hunts, amazing race, etc.) to use at home, around the neighborhood, at the mall, in the park, on the beach, at church, and around town!

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Introduction to this Easter Game

• Can you follow all the actions of the leader without dropping your Easter Egg?

Description of this Easter Game

• Youth must follow a leader while keeping an Easter egg balanced on a spoon the entire time.

Materials

• One boiled and dyed Easter egg for each youth. (Prepare a few Easter eggs as spares in case some are dropped and mutilated beyond use.)
• One tablespoon for each youth.

Preparation

• Boil and dye Easter eggs the night before the Easter event.

Easter Egg Game / Activity Instructions

1. Form all the youth into a single line.
2. Each youth holds his or her spoon from the handle and carefully balances an Easter egg in the spoon.
3. Youth may not use another hand or body part to balance the Easter egg.
4. The youth at the front of the line is the leader.
5. The leader moves into a location where everyone can see and then can move around, hop, or do any other crazy movements as long as he or she doesn’t drop the Easter egg.
6. The rest of the youth must follow the leader’s actions while continuing to balance the Easter egg on the spoon.
7. If one of the youth in line drops the Easter egg or is unable to perform the action she or she must go to the end of the line.
8. If the Leader drops the Easter egg they also move to the end of the line and the next youth in line becomes the leader.
9. Whichever youth is the leader at the end of a designated time, wins the game.

Discussion and Applications
Use this game along with these other Easter Egg activities for a meaningful Bible Lesson:

• Use plastic Eggs with Easter Symbols inside to Tell the Easter Story
• Have a traditional Easter Egg Hunt with a twist that tells the Biblical Easter Story
• Use Egg Tragedy and discuss how the Easter events may have seemed like a tragedy to the Followers of Christ at the time, but after they faced the heat they become much stronger and were used by God to change the world afterward.
• Replace the Colored Jelly Beans in Jelly Bean Salvation with colored Easter Eggs for an evangelistic lesson

Easter Collection

Games and Activities in celebration of Easter.

Get more than 80 creative ideas for planning a Youth Easter celebration or Easter Party. You can immediately download my best Easter Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Easter activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

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Materials
A list of Christmas movies printed on name-tags or address labels. (One title per name-tag)

Icebreaker Description
In this icebreaker / crowdbreaker game, youth will have the name of a Christmas Movie pasted to their back and will wonder the room asking yes or no questions to other youth in an attempt to discover the title of the Christmas movie they have on their back.

Preparation
Create a list of Christmas Movies/ TV Shows: Here are some of the more common ones: A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Carol, A Christmas Story, All I Want for Christmas, An American Christmas Carol, Babes in Toyland, Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Christmas Vacation, Elf, Frosty the Snowman, Heidi, Home Alone, Home for Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, Joyeux Noel, Miracle on 34th Street, Nutcracker, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, Santa Clause: The Movie, Scrooged, The Little Drummer Boy, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey Nestor, The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Night Before Christmas, The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Polar Express, The Santa Clause, The Year Without a Santa Claus, We’re No Angels, White Christmas

Icebreaker Activity

1. Place one of the nametags containing a movie title on the back of every youth as they enter the room.
2. Each youth must now try to guess what is on their back by going around the room asking other youth “yes” or “no” questions about the nametage on their back.
3. These questions must be yes-no questions (ex. Q. “Am I a recent movie?” A. “Yes”)
4. Depending on the size of the youth group, only one question can be asked to each youth in the room (to get everyone talking to everyone else). For small groups you may allow 2 questions per youth.
5. The first youth to guess the name of the movie on their back is the winner.

Variation
Instead of “yes” or “no” questions, as the youth move around moving from person to person they must name one fact about the movie or one character / person that starred in the movie. As soon as a youth is successful in guessing the title of the movie, he goes and sits down. The youth who is giving information to the person with the nametag tries to keep it somewhat vague so that other youth will not be able to sit down before he does. All information must be factual and honest.

Christmas Collection

Get more than 200 creative ideas for planning a Youth Christmas celebration or Christmas Party party. You can immediately download my best Christmas Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Christmas activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!

=> Tell me more about the Christmas Collection