Oh this is a FUN one today, my friend! I love when activities work so naturally with all ages. As you might know, I try really hard to share activities that works for little ones and big kids as well. My house is full of a variety of ages and stages and I try to keep my life as easy and simple as possible.

This means that I choose one activity and figure out how to make it work for my toddler, and school-aged boys, too. This storybook scavenger hunt was a great one for everyone.

I hope you and yours love it just as much as me and mine (grammar police are gonna get me for that sentence … I can feel it)

Just before I share this storybook scavenger hunt with you, have you seen my latest freebie? These ‘starting letter’ animal cards are ideal for little ones just starting out on their alphabet and learning to read journey:

If you and your little one are eager to dive into alphabet letters, sound blending, and beginning to read, it is time for How Wee Read! This is your complete learn to read resource, from rhyming to reading in 70 simple activities:

Click here to learn more about How Wee Read (and get immediate access!)

Within How Wee Read, as we go through each of the various steps for literacy development, I also share with you the importance of continuing to read aloud to our little ones. And as we read aloud, we can play these fun games! Let’s get to the storybook scavenger hunt!

Here is how we did our Storybook Scavenger Hunts

The toddler and preschooler edition

Little Norah absolutely loved this activity! It is such a great one to use for little children as it can be adapted to practice every and any skill.

For this toddler or preschoolers storybook scavenger hunt, simply give your little ones some stickers. Have you seen my great sticker trick yet? It is probably my claim to fame. If you gain nothing else from my 8 year old blog full of over a thousand blog posts, THIS is the thing to know. Pull the backing off of the sheet of stickers! This makes it so much easier for little fingers to peel those stickers free. Anyhow, I digress.

Give your little one a sheet of stickers and a storybook that he or she is familiar with. Then simply call out things for your child to find and pop a sticker on!

When I did this activity with Norah, we chose a board book so she could easily flip the pages herself and the book would also sit open on its own. I then called out some items, one at a time, for her to find: a puppy dog, a kite, the toy car, some shoes.

This is a great way to build vocabulary. Norah found these items and popped a sticker on each one. 

Next, I called out some colours, again one at a time. We are still playing with colours. Just when I think Norah has them down, she surprises me, and I realize we are still in the learning phase. So we keep playing. As you might know, I am a huge (like, mega-huge) proponent for following a child’s lead when in comes to learning. I believe learning is a journey and children progress through this journey at their own pace.  If I ever start to get concerned about one of my little ones paces of learning I simply have to look back three months or so and I will be reminded of all of the progress that has happened. As long as progress is happening, regardless of speed, all is well in my mind. Goodness, again I digress!

Alright! We worked on building vocabulary, we worked on some colours, and then my sweet Norah worked on some body parts all on her own! She started sticking stickers to her feet, so I took her lead and asked if she could stick them on her cheeks, knees, and wrists as well.

Children make learning so natural and fun.

The school-age edition:

This storybook scavenger hunt works out brilliantly for school age children as well. My Benjamin is not a fan of writing right now, so I didn’t add that in to this activity for him. Instead, we focused on building those reading skills.

Ben chose a storybook and he also got a sheet of stickers. We then went through the whole alphabet, searching for words. As we found a word that started with “a”, Ben would read it out loud and then pop a sticker on it. He then went on to search for a word that started with “b”, and so on.

Ben is a fairly new reader, so this was a great chance for him to practice some reading strategies independently. What could he do when he didn’t recognize a word?

1. He could try to sound out.
2. He could use the picture to help.
3. He could read the sentence to gain context. 

So much learning with this simple activity! 

Another option would be to add in some writing. Once the word was found and read, your child could write it down, creating a storybook alphabet!

You could even follow up on this, if your children love writing, and encourage them to write a sentence for each word they wrote down. Or try to combine two letters into one sentence! I mean, you could really take this a million different directions.

My Ben did not take this a million directions. He took it one direction – from a – z, then done, thank you very much. And he was back to catching his toads. I respect that. I mean, he has his whole childhood to get this reading and writing thing down – those toads won’t last. 

I hope you have fun going on a storybook scavenger hunt! 

Thank you so much for reading, my sweet friend,

xo

Sarah