13. July 2019 - Alexander Schmidt
Scavenger Hunt Tasks for a Child's Birthday – 10 x Inspiration
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Varied and age-appropriate tasks for a scavenger hunt for children’s birthday becomes with these ideas and templates literally a breeze. 😉
A Kids birthday with scavenger hunt is coming up and you are involved in the organization? A scavenger hunt to put on the legs always costs some effort, but pays off in the end. First of all, it usually excites the kids, and secondly, it makes for an extensive and well-rounded birthday program. Instead, you then do not have to plan, for example, 5 or more other children’s birthday games.
A scavenger hunt must take place by the way not necessarily outside. If the time of year or the weather doesn’t allow it, or there simply isn’t a suitable area outside, you can definitely do it at home. We’ve summarized some key planning tips for an indoor scavenger hunt for kids in a separate post!
But whether it takes place indoors, in the backyard, a public park, or in the woods, you need tasks for a scavenger hunt for a kid’s birthday party. Here are 10 suggestions for task types that you can modify and adapt to suit your mood!
Because that’s so much more convenient than making it all up yourself from scratch, isn’t it? 🙂
10 Typical Tasks for a Children’s Birthday Scavenger Hunt
When thinking up the tasks, you should in any case take into account the age of the children. For children of preschool age, of course, other riddles come into question than for older, who already go to school and can read and calculate by themselves.
That’s why we haven’t listed 10 very specific tasks, but rather types of tasks that you can make differently difficult, depending on the age of the children participating.
1. Treasure Maps
A treasure map is almost part of a scavenger hunt
A self-painted treasure map adds to the atmosphere of the scavenger hunt on the one hand. But at the same time, it is also a way to shape the search for places or items. For younger children, of course, the map should be easy to read and what is depicted on it as clearly as possible.
For older children, however, you can certainly draw a few cryptic symbols on the map, which will only be explained in the course of the scavenger hunt and after finding and evaluating further clues. Treasure maps are definitely one of the most popular tasks for a scavenger hunt!
2. Clues to Places or Items
Clues to things or places to look for can also come in the form of riddles. For younger ones, you can simply name a few properties that characterize an object or place. “Yellow, square, and you can throw something in it” might be a clue to the nearest mailbox, for example.
Or the children might find an object that is itself a clue to the next stop on the scavenger hunt. A clothespin leads the children to the laundry room, a pine cone to the only fir tree far and wide, the flyer of a store to the same, etc.
For older children, the description may be a bit more mysterious, such as “You will find me where the lying giant bends over the rippling water” as a description for the place where a tree trunk lies across a stream.
3. Study the Surroundings
For much tasks, you can simply take the scavenger hunt area as direct inspiration. For example, one of the simplest tasks is to count something specific in the environment. Whether that is trees in the garden, benches in a park or square, or signposts at a fork in the road.
Children who already go to school and can read by themselves can, of course, master more difficult tasks. Here, the scanning and close study of the surroundings can also be combined with word puzzles, or small arithmetic tasks. For example, one task could be to find the outgoing street with the longest street name around a square. From this, the number of letters must now be multiplied by the number of outgoing streets, etc.
In addition, older children can also use auxiliary objects, e.g., a tape measure, a magnifying glass, binoculars, etc., and accordingly they have to measure something, decipher a tiny inscription, or recognize something far away.
4. Knowledge Questions as Scavenger Hunt Tasks
Once a task is solved, the jubilation of triumph follows
Especially if the scavenger hunt has a theme that the kids are passionate about, you can also incorporate age-appropriate knowledge questions. Of course, these can also be motivated by items found. It may also be necessary to do a bit of research for this, for example in a book or on a computer.
- What is the name of the tree at which you found this clue?
- What is further away from us, the moon or the sun?
- What is the name of the bird that can not fly and lives at the South Pole?
Etc.
5. Arithmetic and Thinking Tasks
Are the children already a little older you can also set small calculating tasks or thinking tasks.
Examples:
- When is today yesterday? (Answer: tomorrow)
- If there are 3 white and 3 black stones in a bag, how many times do you have to blindly draw stones from it to be sure that there is at least one of each color? (Answer: 4 times)
- If Maja and Meike get 20 euros from grandma, but Maja should get 1 euro more than Meike, how much does each get? (Answer: 10.50 and 9.50)
6. Word Puzzle as Scavenger Hunt Tasks
A popular type of tasks for a children’s birthday scavenger hunt are word or language puzzles. These can be quite simple, such as an anagram, meaning a word has the letters mixed up. Or more complex tasks can be set, such as having to form a chain of words.
In some scavenger hunts it is also so that you get as a solution to each task a word and at the end of the initial letters must form the solution word.
7. Picture Puzzles
While word puzzles are better suited for slightly older children who are already fit in reading and writing, picture puzzles can already be solved by the little ones. Provided they are not too difficult.
An easy way to create your own picture puzzles is to make rebus puzzles out of compound words. For example, draw a two rabbits and a foot to represent the term rabbit’s foot. If the children already master the alphabet, you can also take more complicated rebus puzzles, where letters must be exchanged.
8. Joke Questions as Scavenger Hunt Tasks
Children love jokes and joke questions. However, for the scavenger hunt, they should be ones where you can also come up with the solution.
- Who always eats with two spoons? (Answer: The rabbit)
- How many peas fit into an empty jar? (Answer: One, after that it is no longer empty.)
- If an electric locomotive pulls to the northwest, in which direction does the steam pull? (Answer: In none. An E-Lok hatnämlich no steam)
9. Secret Writings and Codes
A “Caesar code” is super suitable for tasks for a scavenger hunt
What goes better with a treasure hunt or scavenger hunt than deciphering codes? After all, that’s what great detectives and explorers do too, right?
The important thing is that the children can either come up with the key to the secret code themselves or find it somewhere.
Popular ciphers or codes are Morse code or Caesar’s cipher. Of course, those who enjoy such things can also invent their own cipher.
10. Action and Interaction Tasks
To make the scavenger hunt a bit more interactive, you can give the kids tasks where they have to become active or interact with people.
This can be that they have to sing a song, ask something at the baker around the corner or do something sporty like hitting a certain target.
And now, good luck thinking up your own tasks for the kids’ birthday scavenger hunt! 🙂
At Abenteuer Freundschaft you can also find tips for a scavenger hunt for adults. You can also browse our leisure portal for ideas for activities with friends, activities with kids or with your partner.
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