Preschool Scavenger Hunts: 5 Ways to Play

When the weather is good, preschool scavenger hunts are a great way to get out of the house, get some exercise, and learn with your kids! Here are five ways to hunt, with lots of free printables to get you started!

If your kids are anything like mine, they love hunting for things. Even though Easter is over and we’ve put away the eggs, there are still lots of ways to hunt for treasures with your little ones. With the weather warming up, spring is the perfect time to move your hunting outside and go on a neighborhood scavenger hunt!

For us, scavenger hunting started last spring when we were finally getting out of the house on walks again. I loved getting outside and moving. The sunshine and the feeling of stretching muscles that had been atrophying over the winter was wonderful…except that after approximately thirty seconds my three-year-old started complaining and asking when we could be done walking.

I knew he was just out of shape from being cooped up all winter, so started brainstorming ways to motivate him to keep moving along on our walks. He needed a distraction to keep his mind off of the exercise he was getting.

Scavenger hunts were the answer.

It was the perfect solution. My son loved picking out a hunt to do, printing it out, and head out on a walk/bike ride with his very own paper and a crayon. He’d ride his tricycle, and I’d remind him of a few things to be looking for (and point some out when I saw them). Then, when we found something “on our list” (as he likes to say), he’d hop off his tricycle and scribble an X over that picture. We’d pick a few more things from the list to watch for, and off we’d go again.

Walks have become so much more fun for both of us since we started doing scavenger hunts, and it’s also been a great way to take “mommy school” outside and sneak in some academic learning.

Here are five different types of scavenger hunts you can enjoy with your little ones.

Update: I originally wrote this post in 2016, when I had two young kids. Almost a decade later, I have three big boys, and we have done COUNTLESS scavenger hunts. We use them when we travel, go to museums, and all sorts of other places. The hunts have changed as they’ve grown, but they are still a hit!

Awesome Preschool Scavenger Hunts

1. Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt

These are the ones we do most often. Just print my scavenger hunt below, or use any of the many of hunts available on Pinterest, get your walking shoes on, and start looking for things that are in your neighborhood. Little Man likes the grid-style hunts with pictures best (since he can’t read yet), and 12-20 items per hunt is about the right number for his attention span.

Click here to download the FREE Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt
And for more fun, here are some of the other hunts we’ve done and enjoyed:

Scavenger Hunts for Kids from The Bird Feed NYC
Neighborhood Scavenger Hunt from Smarty Pants
Nature and City Scavenger Hunts from No Wooden Spoons
Spring Scavenger Hunt Bingo from Pottawattamie County Conservation
Nature Scavenger Hunt from The Measured Mom
Neighborhood Scavenger Hunts from Running from the Law

2. Rainbow Color Scavenger Hunt

Spring is a great time to talk about rainbows and explore colors. Take your kids outside to hunt for all the colors of the rainbow (and a few extras) using this free printable rainbow scavenger hunt I made for my own kiddos.

3. Shape Scavenger Hunt

This shape scavenger hunt is super simple, but it’s a great way to encourage kids to observe the world around them and think critically about what they see. For example, rather than just finding a stop sign, they have to see the stop sign, recognize that it’s an octagon, and connect it to the blank octagon on their list. That’s serious brain work!

Younger kids can just cross off each shape as they find something that matches it. For older kids, you can have your child fill in the shape by drawing the item they found.

Click here to download the FREE Shape Scavenger Hunt

4. Alphabet Scavenger Hunt

I originally made this scavenger hunt as a way to engage my kids in exploring our local aquarium, but it would work equally well for walking around the neighborhood, driving in the car, or even just hunting in your house. The goal is simple: find something that starts with each letter of the alphabet! Get the free printable here.

5. Counting Scavenger Hunt

For this scavenger hunt, kids will love counting items EVERY time they find them instead of just once. See which things you can find most often, and make tally marks next to each item’s picture to keep track. For our hunt, I made sure to pick items that wouldn’t be TOO frequent (I hope). Otherwise you might not ever actually get any walking done.

Note: This would be a great hunt to do if you’re going on a walk or run and you want your child to stay in a stroller. Tally marking frequently keeps them from getting bored.

Click here to download the FREE Counting Scavenger Hunt

There you go! I hope you have fun getting outside with your little ones and trying these out!