Make time spent with family, friends, and kids fun and meaningful with these home scavenger hunt ideas you can implement around the house.
A scavenger hunt around the home is a nice way to spend meaningful fun time with kids. Kids are easy to amuse and excite. However, this can also be a nice way to get adults to spend time together. Have a laugh hunting for treasures around the house with this. Consider using scavenger hunts to make gift-giving more interesting as well.
Scavenger hunt inside the house clues
Here’s one way to entertain kids through a home treasure hunt. Use a series of clues that lead them from one place to another with a final goal in mind. Perhaps some sweets, a gift or even the keys to the car so you can take them for a drive.
Clues can consist of little riddles or trivia questions about the next room. You can also use the clues as a chance to remind kids of important things or places around the home.
For example, you may have clues set up in the places below. Kids need to decipher these in order to get to the final goal of finding their treasures in the washing machine.
Front door → Kitchen table → Next to the tv → Under their pillows → In the washing machine
Here is an example of a rhyming riddle you can use that points to a treasure hunt clue under their pillow. This clue also reminds kids about brushing their teeth before bed.
“After you brush your teeth and turn off the lights
Where do you put your head at night?”
Clues can also be simple questions. Like:
“Where do you sit when it’s time for breakfast?”
Scavenger Hunt outside the house clues
On a day with good weather, you can have kids explore your yard and get familiar with the outdoors. This is also the perfect setting for a scavenger hunt around the house and a treasure hunt with nature.
One great thing you can incorporate into an outside treasure hunt is a little science knowledge. Teach kids about how birds make nests by collecting things like twigs and grass and fluff and even fabric. Emulate this with a bird’s nest treasure hunt where you have kids look for things around the yard to make their own bird’s nest. You can use things that may already be in your yard or things that you have placed strategically. Whichever you choose, try to add some natural objects such as leaves, feathers, rocks, flowers. Even plastic or colourful ones.
Ask the kids to find and collect a list of things as part of the scavenger hunt. Put them in a little basket or bowl that might already have twigs and leaves as their own bird’s nest.
If you go with the bird’s nest idea, perhaps have some hard-boiled eggs or marshmallow eggs in the garden as well to complete the scavenger hunt.
Treasure hunts in the yard aren’t just for Easter!
Scavenger Hunts at home for older kids or adults
Older kids and teens can handle more challenging clues and may also be able to do a home scavenger hunt with less supervision. Give them a trail of clues in an interesting format and let them have fun figuring it out. You can also use more complex formats for clues here, such as word searches or crossword puzzles.
An example of using a more complex home treasure hunt clue format is to create a crossword puzzle with clues about the next place to look. Hide the treasure hunt crossword clues in places that your hunters must go to one by one until they get the final clue. It’s up to you to decide what the final clue takes your hunters to.
Make this home treasure hunt simpler by giving your hunters all the clues except one and they must use the other clues to find the final solution location.
You can make the crossword puzzle by hand or use a free online crossword puzzle generator to come up with your treasure hunt clues.
Another interesting way to give out clues for a home scavenger hunt is to have clues written on individual pieces of paper each with a mystery letter at the back. When all the clues are collected, the mystery letters at the back of the clues must be unscrambled to point to the location of the final treasure.
These ways of giving out clues encourage teamwork because the more people involved, the easier it is to solve the puzzles. Your hunters will need all the help they can get.
Try these out with teens or with adults and have them look for exciting treasures.
Need more ideas?
Visit our page here for more ideas you can incorporate in your scavenger hunt: https://www.treasure-hunt-clues.com/ideas/
