Free Printable Scavenger Hunts for Kids

An easy way to get kids active and learning outside is to go on a scavenger hunt. My daughter loves doing nature walks and observing things (here’s one we did in the fall that includes seeing, hearing and collecting items as you go). They’re sutiable fo all seasons and can be adapted for wherever you live, depending on what you’re likely to see when you go out.

Buggy and Buddy has a great list of more than 30 printable scavenger hunts, so you’re sure to find something that will suit your needs. There’s a wide range of ideas here, including:

color hunt
sound hunt
hiking scavenger hunt
night scavenger hunt
bug scavenger hunt
airplane scavenger hunt
beach scavenger hunt
zoo scavenger hunt
Christmas scavenger hunt

It’s pretty easy to make your own scavenge hunt checklist, too; I made mine in Word with a little clip art and some squares to make checkboxes. And you can always do a nature walk without a printable and just write down or draw pictures of things you observe. Count trees and squirrels in the city or collect a great rock, and kids will have fun walking wherever you are.

Do you like to do scavenger hunts? I’d love to hear about what you go looking for!

[Photo via Buggy and Buddy.]

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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