Fall is the best time of year for an outdoor scavenger hunt. There are leaves in every color, seeds everywhere, and it's cool enough to spend an afternoon outside without anybody melting.
These lists work in any backyard or park. Nothing on them asks a child to pick or break a living thing: they find it, look at it, and tick it off.
What's on the list, by age
Ages 4 to 6
- A leaf
- A stone
- Something yellow
- A stick
- Something bumpy
Ages 7 to 10
- A leaf bigger than your hand
- Three different kinds of leaf
- A seed
- A twig shaped like the letter Y
- Something a bird could use to build a nest
11 and up
- Something growing where nobody planted it
- Something that will not be here next month
- A color you cannot name properly
- The oldest living thing you can find
Making it a real fall afternoon
- Bring a paper bag per kid for the things they're allowed to keep, like fallen leaves and seeds.
- Set a boundary everybody can see: the fence, the path, the edge of the playground.
- Finish with a leaf sort. Tip the bags out and put the leaves in order from green to brown. It's the calmest ten minutes of the day.
