Who doesn’t love a good scavenger hunt? And a scavenger hunt in nature is even better! Today I am so excited to bring you some nature scavenger hunts for kids with a FREE Scavenger Hunt Printable (to make that fun and learning even easier).

Scavenger hunts are such a wonderful tool for all sorts of skill development—everything from fine and gross motor skills, to vocabulary building, numeracy, color recognition, and sensory experiences! It’s no wonder that I use scavenger hunts in my resources, including my best-selling Kindergarten program, Kindergarten at Home.

If you have a little one between the ages of 4 and 6, I invite you to check out this beautiful program:

A beautiful, educational, and playful year of kindergarten!

Learn more about Kindergarten at Home and The Everything Kindergarten Bundle:
shop.howweelearn.com/collections/everything-kindergarten

Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable… with an Egg Carton!

As you might know, I have many little ones of all different ages. Since we homeschool, I try really hard to create activities that are ideal for as many ages as possible. This one clears any age span, my friend! From the tiniest toddlers to big kids.

Today, I wanted to share with you how I used this activity with my then 2-year-old. You can also see how I used it with my 8 and 10 year old boys right here.

For Norah, I decided we would do a “colors” themed nature scavenger hunt. I printed off our little cards, cut them out, and popped them in the egg carton.

NOW, I saw the most brilliant thing the other day! Susie from Busy Toddler shared the idea of cutting 2 egg carton cups off so you would have 10 egg carton cups (5 on the top and 5 on the bottom). This makes it a perfect ‘Making 10’ chart.

I have to say – this simple idea has totally rocked my world. The possibilities!

Anyway, I digress. So I cut the egg carton so we had 10 cups and popped the 10 colored dots in the bottom. And Norah took it from there. She was walking all around the yard, finding little stones, leaves, dirty pinecones, you name it, trying to match her colors.

She tended to find the most unappealing places of our little homestead as well, my husband pointed out, making the pictures trying. She didn’t want to explore the pretty spring garden we had just planted or the freshly cut grass. Nope, dirty chicken area and the gravel driveway.  

Her big brothers helped her along as she was trying to find colors, as this is a skill that she hasn’t yet mastered. 

Since we had such a beautiful Making 10 Chart that we were using, we could easily chat about numbers during this nature scavenger hunt as well. It was so easy to see if we had all 5 cups in the top row filled or how many were missing. This was a great way to add in counting, one-to-one correspondence, and loads of math.

The only color that was tricky to find was purple. She settled on a stone that was sort of a shade of purple. This will be an easier task when all the flowers start popping up!

Once she had found all of the colors, we sat down to chat about her treasures. This is such an important step for toddlers and preschoolers (actually, for children of all ages). Developing language happens best by talking to our little ones lots and lots. We want them to hear all sorts of words and descriptions.

We chatted about the feather in her egg carton. I asked her if it felt soft and she rubbed it on her cheek (don’t worry, it was from one of our chickens. That might not make it any better, but it made ME feel better!). I told her to place it on her hand and give it a little blow. Poof! Off it fluttered. Norah thought that was the best and gathered it up to do this again and again. 

We also chatted about the rocks she collected, comparing them by size. We found out which one was the biggest, which was the littlest, which one was heaviest, and which one was lightest. 

Of course, we only continued this for so long because Norah was interested. She tends to be my quieter child and enjoys sitting still and chatting. Prior to this baby, I had thought children like this were mythical beings. Ha! If my little one had not wanted to sit still to chat about treasures, we would have made this a much more physical exploration. We would have been tossing the stones into puddles, trying to stand on them and balance, or walking with them on our heads. There are a lot of ways to develop language as you move about!

This activity was such a hit with Norah; I know we will visit it again and again.

I want you to do this activity again and again with us! I have made a nature scavenger hunt printable for you that includes all sorts of great things you can pop in egg cartons. These ideas are great for kids of all ages! 

In this FREE Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable, you will get:

• colors
• color words
• numbers
• textures (with pictures)
• vocabulary building words
• opposites (I share how we did this one with you in this blog post!)
• and letters

Grab your FREE 9-page Nature Scavenger Hunt Printables:

I hope one of these ideas is perfect for you and yours. And if you need just oooone more nature scavenger hunt (actually, four more), you can also try these Four Season Scavenger Hunts! Happy playing!

Thank you so much for reading, sweet friend,

xo
Sarah