These boredom-buster outdoor scavenger hunt ideas are sure to become favorite activities in your home or classroom! These scavenger hunt activities range from simple checklists to fun scavenger nature crafts. There is something here for all interests, age and ability levels.

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

RELATED: Check out 10+ Simple and Beautiful Stone Activities for Kids

Check out the Outdoor Scavenger Hunts!

1.  Nature Hunt Printables (With a Real Magnifying Glass)

These nature scavenger hunt printables are unique and so fun to use! Children love the peek through magnifying glass that is conveniently placed right on the printable. No more fumbling around with a magnifying glass, clipboard, scavenger hunt sheet and pencil, this scavenger hunt has everything you need right on the printable! You can keep the magnifying glass empty and use the center as a focal point. OR…

You can add a real credit card sized magnifying glass and tape it to the cut out area on the scavenger hunt printable. As you can see in the links below,  I included outdoor scavanger hunt printables for all seasons and interests!

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Find the credit card sized magnifying glasses HERE.

Get the scavenger hunt printables at a discounted price HERE.

2. My Wild Finds- Collect and Craft with Nature

Love the idea of crafting with the pieces of nature that you find? These nature printables offer fun ways to search for nature, collect it, and create art with the most lovely crafting supplies around! Crafting with nature is the perfect way to connect kids with nature and helps you ditch plastic crafting supplies for natural and biodegradable material. Here’s how this outdoor scavenger hunt works: First collect nature using an egg carton and fun printable prompt. 

Next, use the pieces of nature to make a flower crown or cool nature mask! I even included pictures that are perfect for decorating with nature. 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Get the printables at a discounted price HERE.

3. How to Make Nature Mandalas with Kids and the Muffin Tin Scavenger Hunt

As seen on Good Housekeeping, this fun nature hunt and activity will keep kids busy for a long time! Kids will love collecting nature with the muffin tin scavenger prompts, then turning their treasures into nature mandalas. 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Get the printables at a discounted price HERE.

4. Nature Collection Scavenger Hunt and Journal

This is a great low-prep outdoor activity that will keep kids of all ages busy for hours. Kids will have fun while they craft, color, and learn with collected pieces of nature! Perfect for fall, winter, spring, and summer, this nature journal for kids will keep your children away from the screen and enjoying all that nature has to offer. The cover is a paper bag so it doubles as a collection bag for nature treasures! 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Get the printables at a discounted price HERE.

5. Nature Hunt Printables for Indoor or Outdoor Use

If your children love getting outdoors and exploring nature, then these nature activities are for you! Just pick one out of the 16 scavenger hunt options, print on card stock, cut out and head outdoors! It’s ok if you don’t find all objects, just have fun and explore. Children will also love using the fun true to scale ruler conveniently placed on the magnifying glass handle! This opens up so many opportunities for learning and exploring. 

With the addition of the circular nature hunt pieces, this scavenger hunt printable pack can be used both indoors or outdoors.

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Get the printables at a discounted price HERE.

6. No Prep Outdoor Scavenger Hunts- Just Print and Go!

Here are over 20 outdoor printable activities you can try in your own backyard or during your next nature walk around the neighborhood. These no-prep nature scavenger hunt pages and checklists are perfect last minute activities and require no extra work or effort on your end. Just print and head outdoors with your kids! 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the outdoor printables HERE.

Get the printables at a discounted price HERE.

7. Sticky Flower Scavenger Hunt for Spring and Summer

Here is a fun and easy flower scavenger hunt to try with kids! This activity will help children learn nature identification right in their own backyard. The cardboard piece is reusable for endless scavenger hunts.

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

8. Sticky Leaf Scavenger Hunt for Fall

Try this sticky leaf scavenger hunt in fall! This leaf activity is awesome for teaching children leaf identification at a young age and will help them learn the shapes of different types of leaves. 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

9. Nature Vocabulary Word Scavenger Hunt

This fun outdoor educational scavenger hunt is fun for kids of all ages! The winter word search activity offers a fun and hands-on way for children to learn basic seasonal vocabulary words and expand their knowledge of the seasonal differences in the natural world. Weather isn’t cooperating? That’s okay, you can easily bring this activity indoors!

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the winter scavenger hunt printables HERE.

Get all four seasons at a discounted price HERE.

10. Butterfly Scavenger Hunt and Identification Activities

Hide these butterflies and search for them with your handy printable scavenger hunt! This is a fun reason to get outside and helps children learn all about butterflies. 

Learn more about this activity HERE. 

Find the winter printables HERE.

11. Rainbow Flower Threading Boards

 This is more of a scavenger hunt craft! Search for flowers that are all colors of the rainbow and display them on a cardboard rainbow! This reusable cardboard rainbow takes just minutes to set up and will be loved throughout the spring and summer seasons! Kids will love decorating the rainbow while working on color recognition, hand-eye coordination, and strengthening fine motor skills. 

Learn more about this activity HERE.

12. Easy Egg Nature Walk for Spring

This fun outdoor activity for spring will have children looking for different colors in nature. This activity is so easy to prep and will lead to hours of outdoor play and exploration for kids! You can make any cardboard frame to fit any learning theme or area of interest for your child. I added colors on the side our board to encourage a nature color scavenger hunt. 

Learn more about this activity HERE.

Pin it to save it for later!

I hope you give these outdoor scavenger hunt ideas a try! I promise, your little nature lovers will love them as much as my boys.

∼Tara

Looking for more nature activities for kids?! Check out:

A Simple and Beautiful Nature Craft to Try Today!

The post Outdoor Scavenger Hunt Ideas for Kids appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

If your children love getting outdoors and exploring nature, then these nature activities are for you! Just pick one out of the 16 scavenger hunt options, print, cut out and head outdoors! It’s ok if you don’t find all objects, just have fun and explore. 

What’s included in this Nature Hunt Printable Packet?!

There are 16 nature hunts to choose from and they are great for all seasons and interests. The nature hunts included are: Insects, Spooky Things (great Halloween scavenger hunt), Forest, Get Outside! (general nature items), Snowy Day, Garden, Spring Flowers, Summer Flowers, Tide Pool, Lake, Pond, Leaves, Seeds, Mushrooms (all edible varieties), Clouds and Animal Tracks.

All 16 nature hunt printables come in color and black & white. The circular nature hunt pieces only come in color, for a total of 60+ pages!

Here is an up close look at a few of the nature hunt printables. This Spooky Scavenger Hunt is great for Halloween and fall!

I love this Snowy Day Scavenger Hunt for the Winter Solstice or any beautiful snowy day!

We loved using the ruler handle for the Spring Flower hunt! It was fun to measure the flowers!

Pictured below is one of the circular nature hunt pieces. These are great to use indoors on a rainy day or hide them in your backyard or schoolyard for a different scavenger hunt experience!

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

How to Make Your Nature Hunt Printables:

These nature activities are very easy to prepare and use! These should be printed on cardstock to make a sturdier magnifying glass. I also suggest laminating to use them over and over again. You can also cross off items you find with a dry erase marker on laminated scavenger sheets!

I use my laminator at home with thick lamination pouches, which makes them mostly waterproof. The lamination at school will probably be too thin to make them waterproof, but will help with durability!

If laminating, I suggest to print on cardstock, cut out the magnifying glass, run the cut out magnifying glass through the laminator, and cut out one more time. This method will help with water resistance. I highly recommend laminating printables for the Snowy Day hunt or any other hunt that is near water. 

Please Note!

Many of the images are the same in this packet as my Nature Scavenger Hunt Printables Packet. A handful of them are completely new, some of them are the same but have a few different objects to search for, and a couple (animal tracks & clouds) are exactly the same. I believe there is enough variability for students to love both sets and they also compliment each other nicely! Also, the ruler and shape of scavenger hunts add fun new elements. Check out my scavenger hunt bundle by clicking here!

Supplies:

• Nature Hunt Printables available on TPT 
• Cardstock or printer paper- I recommend cardstock for a more durable work mat. 
• Laminator machine
• Scissors

Now that you have all of your supplies, it’s time to get outside and start exploring!

I hope you try these nature hunt printables! I promise, your little learners will love it as much as my boys and preschoolers.

∼Tara

Looking for more fun printables for kids?! Check out:

4 Ways to Use Story Stones in the Classroom

Color Activities for Kids with See-Through Lenses

The post Nature Hunt Printables- Indoor or Outdoor appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

These scavenger hunts are so easy to make and so fun to use! The best part about the magnifying glass, is that it extends the amount of time children spend outdoors searching for items! I guarantee this will be the most engaged your child has ever been with a scavenger hunt. The magnifying glass helps children focus their attention on the objects right in front of them and they love getting an extra close look, through the magnifying glass. 

You can also use the printable without a real magnifying glass. The cut out by itself is a great focal point for imaginative play and learning! Either way, these are fun and engaging leave no trace activities for kids.

What’s included in this Nature Scavenger Hunt Printable Packet?!

There are 18 scavenger hunt printables included in this packet. The scavenger hunts include: general nature, signs of spring, signs of summer, signs of fall, signs of winter, summer flower, spring flower, garden, leaf, seed, insect, color, gratitude, tally mark, cloud, mushroom, animal tracks, and alphabet. Seventeen of the eighteen scavenger hunt printables come in both black & white and color options and one comes in just black & white, for a total of 35 pages!

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

Find the Printable for this Activity on TPT or Etsy! 

How to Make the Magnifying Glass?

The magnifying glass is easy to make! Laminate the cardstock and cut out the lens part of the printable.

Last, tape the edges of the credit card sized magnifying glass to the back of the printable! The magnifying glasses are made of plastic and durable.

Below, you can see how well the magnifying glass works! It’s even more fun to use outside in nature. 

Here’s a Couple of ways to use your Nature Scavenger Hunt Printables:

This example shows the printable with a real magnifying glass and clothespins are used to check off items found. Start with clothespins at the top and bottom of the printable and move them to the side as you find items.

This example does not have a real magnifying glass and a dry erase marker is used to cross off pictures of items found. The dry erase marks can be easily erased when finished. Try sticking one velcro circle on the scavenger hunt and other velcro circle on the dry erase marker. This is a great way to keep your supplies all in one spot. When the marker is not in use, just stick it right to the velcro on the scavenger hunt

Here’s a Peak at all of the Scavenger Hunts!

Before we look at the scavenger hunts, I want you to think about a few things. I did not add instructions because I want children to use it in a way that works best for them! To keep the scavenger hunts fresh and fun, try the clothespins one day and dry erase markers on another. Use a real magnifying glass for one scavenger hunt and go without it for a different one. Children will like to use these sheets in different ways and that’s ok!

A few of the scavenger hunts, like mushrooms and clouds, have scientific names. These can be difficult to pronounce and I wouldn’t expect a child to be able to read or remember all of them. That’s also ok! This is all about exposure and having fun.

If you aren’t having any luck finding specific items on the list, try searching for the colors of the items. For example, you can look for the colors of leaves on the leaf scavenger hunt instead of the particular leaves! Make this work for you. 

Now lets get to the scavenger hunts! These scavenger hunts are perfect for seasonal activities! Check out the spring, summer, fall and winter scavenger hunt printables. 

Here are a couple of scavenger hunts that are great for any time of year! For the tally mark scavenger hunt, use a dry erase marker to make tally marks on the laminated printable. This is great for reinforcing early math skills while being outdoors!

The animal track and mushroom printables are fun for adventurous little explorers! Try looking for animal tracks in mud or snow! And remember, don’t touch or eat mushrooms because they could be poinsonous.

These scavenger hunts are fun to try right in your own backyard! Children love spending time in the garden and really enjoy looking for insects and seeds. 

I love these three scavenger hunts! The alphabet scavenger hunt can be used in a couple of different ways: Children can either clip a clothespin on the alphabet letter after they find something in nature that starts with that letter or write the word next to the corresponding letter. For example, if a child finds an apple, they would write “apple” next to the “Aa.” I find an ultra fine dry erase marker works best in these small writing spaces. 

The gratitude scavenger hunt is fun to try around Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day. And the color scavenger hunt is fun for children of all ages!

The alphabet and color scavenger hunt printables can be used indoors on a rainy day!

Here’s what you’ll need to make these nature scavenger hunt printables!

Supplies:

• Nature Scavenger Hunt Printables available on TPT or Etsy
• Cardstock or printer paper- I recommend cardstock for a more durable work mat. 
• Laminator machine
• Scissors
• Credit Card Sized Magnifying Glass
• Dry Erase Markers  or Clothes pins(I like mini clothes pins for this activity, but regular sized will work too!)
• Velcro Dots– These are completely optional! They are great to stick on the scavenger hunt printable and dry erase marker to keep all of your objects together. When the marker is not in use, just stick it right to the velcro on the scavenger hunt.

Now that you have all of your supplies, it’s time to get outside and start exploring!

These are great for every season, even winter! The snow looked beautiful magnified through the lenses. We could have looked at it for hours!

We preferred to go without the magnifying glass for the cloud hunt. The clouds looked really neat framed in the magnifying glass!

Pin this to save it for later!

I hope you try these nature scavenger hunt printables! I promise, your little learners will love it as much as my boys and preschoolers.

∼Tara

Looking for more fun printables for kids?! Check out:

4 Ways to Use Story Stones in the Classroom

Color Activities for Kids with See-Through Lenses

The post Nature Scavenger Hunt Printables appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

To prepare your shape lenses printable, cut out the lenses and run the sheets through the laminator. I used my laminator at home because my sheets are a bit thicker than the laminator machines at school. Cardstock is recommended to unsure a durable work mat!

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

RELATED: Check out the Nature Collection Journal

Find the Printable for this Activity HERE!

Check out the COLOR AND SHAPE ACTIVITY BUNDLE HERE!

There are four different shape activities for kids included in this packet and it includes both black&white and color options for printing. Here are the directions for the first activity! The shape options included in the printable packet are: circle, triangle, square, rectangle, oval, star, heart, crescent, diamond/rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon and trapezoid. 

Activity 1: Trace the Shapes

First, look through the lenses and say the name of the shape.

Next, say the names of the shapes and trace them with dry erase markers. 

Last, erase the marker. 

Activity 2: Sort the Shapes

First, look through the lenses and say the name of the shape.

Then, say the names of the objects on the cards and sort them on the correct side. Object names are listed in the product.

Activity 3: Trace the words

First, look through the lenses and say the name of the shape.

Next, trace the shape words and say the name.

Last, erase the marker. 

Activity 4: Write the words

First, look through them and say the name of the shape.

Next, write the shape words on the lines.

Last, erase the marker. 

The unique and convenient combination of both see-through lenses with the learning activities on the sheet, makes this the perfect blend of learning and play!

These are fun to hold up in front of different objects to view them as different shapes! I love this packet because there is truly something for every young learner. Whether you are trying to expose your students to shapes for the first time or working on shape mastery, there is an activity for here for many age levels and abilities!

Here’s what you’ll need to make these shape activities for kids!

Supplies:

• Shape Activity printable
• Cardstock or printer paper- I recommend cardstock for a more durable work mat. 
• Laminator machine
• Scissors
• Dry Erase Markers
• Dry Erase Marker Cleaner

Pin this to save it for later!

Check out the COLOR OPTION as well!

I hope you try these shape activities for kids! I promise, your little learners will love it as much as my boys and preschoolers.

∼Tara

Looking for more fun printables for kids?! Check out:

4 Ways to Use Story Stones in the Classroom

Muffin Tin Nature Scavenger Hunt

The post Shape Activities for Kids with See-Through Lenses appeared first on Little Pine Learners.

To prepare the printable, cut out the lenses and run the sheets through the laminator. I used my laminator at home because my sheets are a bit thicker than the laminator machines at school. Cardstock is recommended to unsure a durable work mat!

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

Find the Printable for this Activity HERE!

Check out the COLOR AND SHAPE ACTIVITY BUNDLE HERE!

Once the sheets are prepped, decide if you want to use cellophane sheets to color the lenses or if you want students to color them with dry erase or chalk markers.

Here is the cellophane method:

Tape a strip of cellophane to the back of the lenses and you are all set! This gives a very smooth and colorful finish, which is great for viewing! The cellophane is also a good option if you are using thinner lamination and regular printer paper. Erasing dry erase marker over and over again on the lenses portion might cause wear and tear on thinner work mats, so the cellophane would help the mats last longer!

Here is the Marker Method:

Another option is to keep the lenses clear and let the children color the lenses with dry erase or chalk markers! My preschoolers and second grade son both really enjoyed this option. They thought it was fun to create colorful lenses all by themselves. 

This is all great fine motor work for little ones! Both the cellophane and marker options are great, and you can choose one that works best for your class… OR try them both! Keep dry erase liquid cleaner on hand for easy clean up. 

There are four different color activities for kids included in this packet and it includes both black&white and color options for printing. Here are the directions for the first activity!

Activity 1: Trace the Shapes

First, color the lenses (if there isn’t cellophane), look through them and say the name of the color.

Next, say the names of the objects and color them with dry erase or chalk markers. Objects on the coloring mats and sorting sheets (next activity) are the same.

Last, Erase the marker. 

Activity 2: Sort the pictures

First, color the lenses (if there isn’t cellophane), look through them and say the name of the color.

Next, say the names of the objects on the cards and sort them on the correct side. Object names are listed in the product.

Last, erase the marker.

Activity 3: Trace the words

First, color the lenses (if there isn’t cellophane), look through them and say the name of the color.

Next, trace the color words and say the color name.

Last, erase the marker. 

Activity 4: Write the words

First, color the lenses (if there isn’t cellophane), look through them and say the name of the color.

Next, write the color words on the lines.

Last, erase the marker. 

The colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple and pink work best for these activiteis. It’s easiest to find the supplies for these colors and they look really inviting and fun to play with. I included brown, black, white and grey/gray for teachers that want to make complete sets and might have access to supplies that I don’t access to. Here is a list of supplies to help you get started!

Supplies:

• Color Activity printable
• Cardstock or printer paper- I recommend cardstock for a more durable work mat. 
• Laminator machine
• Scissors
• Dry Erase or Chalk Markers- If you want one marker for every color offered in the product, you might need to buy multiple sets. This set has most of the colors needed. I have only found white in chalk marker sets. Please note that chalk markers are not quite as see-through as dry erase markers and will leave lines on the lenses, but they still work and are easier to clean! Here is an entire set with all of the colors needed for the activity. 
• Colored cellophane- Just like the markers, you will need to do some searching for all the colors offered in the product. Here is a great set that offers the rainbow colors. Here is a black cellophane roll. I would use that set for both gray and black. Just use one sheet for gray and 2 sheets for black. Here is a white polka dot cellophane roll (white is tough to find) and here is a brown cellophane roll!
• Dry Erase Marker Cleaner

This post contains Affiliate links for your convenience.

Pin this activity to save it for later!

I hope you try these color activities for kids! I promise, your little learners will love it as much as my boys and preschoolers.

∼Tara

Looking for more fun printables for kids?! Check out:

4 Ways to Use Story Stones in the Classroom

Nature Collection Journal for Kids

The post Color Activities for Kids with See-Through Lenses Printable appeared first on Little Pine Learners.