Week of the Young Child (Day 4): Take it Outside

Now that spring is here and the weather is starting to get warmer it the perfect time to get outside.

Some of the activities we enjoy almost daily are playing sports, going to the play ground, swimming (in the summer) and having picnics.

But if your family is anything like mine, and we love those activities, but sometimes we want to mix it up and make it a bit more fun for both grown ups and kids.

We have a State Park about a half an hour away from our house and love to go there for walks in the woods. We quickly found the kids needed something to do on these walks so I searched the internet and found all sorts of links for "Nature Scavenger Hunts."

The kids loved having something to do while we were on our walk. Now, every time we go, Scavenger Hunts are a must! And with the internet doing all the advanced planning for us, I just make a few adjustments to the lists and off we go!

The wonderful thing about the scavenger hunts is you can adapt them to all age groups and environments.

For little kids, print up a list with pictures instead of words. The kids can either check off the items as they find them, or draw pictures. If your kids are older, give them more cryptic clues such as "find something a deer would eat" or "find something that floats."

Live in a city? Take a walk around the block or your local park and look for different colored shutters or window boxes or count the number of blue cars you see. You could even adapt this to use in the grocery store with your shopping list if you wanted.

With Earth Day right around the corner, you can incorporate the Scavenger Hunt into the perfect Earth Day activity. Bring garbage bag and some gloves and pick up trash as you go or, you can use the opportunity to teach the kids about the different things you see -- we tested to see what items floated and what items sank.

We are lucky enough to live in a state where we can go outside most of the year so we do the scavenger hunts in the winter too. We just change what we need to look for to suit the season. Believe me, being able to get out of the house in the winter time helps to maintain our sanity!

We also like to bring a "treasure" for the kids to find after they get all items on their list. Usually one of us distracts the kids while the other one "hides" the treat (usually it's a few wrapped chocolate Kisses or similar). It's a nice treat at the end of the walk.

Happy Hunting!

A Hunting We Will Go!

We finally had some really pretty weather here this weekend. It was warm enough to get outside, finally, so we did.

Josh spent the night at a friend's house on Friday. He stayed up too late and got up too early (of course) so we wanted to take it easy but still get outside. So in the afternoon we headed over to a local park. It was really nice being outside in the fresh air and just the thing both the kids needed to expend enough energy to tire out their bodies!

The weather on Sunday was even nicer than Saturday so we got up and headed out to our local Georgia State Park for a walk. Now normally when we go for a walk, the boys complain so we wanted to make it fun for them. We decided to have a Nature Scavenger Hunt with a "Treasure" at the end.

They were so excited! This was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself! I found a website that had lots of different ideas and lists. I edited this list and printed up copies for the boys, packed up pencils, water and a snack and we were off!

Sam inspecting the list. "Hmmm... What do we need?"

Eagle eye Josh finds "something orange" right away! I thought this would be the hardest one, but nope. First thing!

Checking to see what floats. Where we are standing is normally underwater. We watched fish jump up and catch flies one year where we are now standing. The drought has really lowered the lake levels and reduced this part to nothing more than a stream.

The boys each picked something to see if it would float -- Josh's stick floated and Sam's pinecone got stuck in the mud. But then it floated once Daddy "unstuck" it!

The "Future Scientist" writing down his findings.

Some other things on the list that I got photos of were: a tree with no leaves, something an animal would eat, something pointy (also worked for something brown), and something green.

Once the boys found all 17 items on their list, they found a treasure!

For a smart kid, sometimes Josh amazes me! He could not figure out how the "treasure" got there -- even though he practically caught Rich putting it there! And he kept wondering who put it there.

In the end we decided it must have been the Woodland Faeries!

And you know, the "treasure" the Faeries left looks just like the coins Santa left in their stocking! Imagine that!

Sam was quick on the uptake though. He said, "Thank you Mommy and Daddy for my chocolate!"

We continued on with our walk and stopped a bit later for a snack.

Finally, we reached the end of the trail!
See, I did go on the walk too!

Josh declared himself the "winner" and then it was time to go home for lunch!

We had a great time -- the boys thought the scavenger hunt was fantastic! The website I found has lots of ideas for future scavenger hunts too.

Next time, I may do a different one for Josh and Sam. I may have a place for them to draw what they see or put pictures on Sam's list so he knows what he's looking for. Make it a bit more age appropriate!

But it was lots of fun and definitely worth doing again!