Category : Creative teaching
I’ve been wanting to plan a scavenger hunt for years! It seems like the coolest way to keep kids entertained, spend time in nature, and host an outdoor themed party or activity. After hosting my son’s 10th birthday party and organizing a great scavenger hunt over the weekend, I realized that until you put your own special touch into the hunt, it becomes easier and fun to plan. I’m going to give you a cheat sheet so that you can organize a fun scavenger hunt quickly – even make it a fun weekend activity for the family. I discovered that scavenger hunts are a special way to unite older kids with nature and that is so important in this world where our kids seem too busy with sports and electronics to properly engage.
You first need to ask yourself, “what is your goal with the scavenger hunt?” I wanted my son’s friends to be able to run free, climb, make noise, engage and learn during the scavenger hunt. When kids are enjoying themselves and have the opportunity to learn something, especially facts about nature, I think it’s magical. So my first task was to find a place that met the criteria for this scavenger hunt. My entire family went and walked through a park with old growth trees, lots of ponds and streams, an easy trail, and not super busy so that the hunt would be relatively un-interrupted. While we were walking through the trail where the hunt would be setup, I tried to find subtle things in nature that you would only notice if you were searching. . . a field of baby ferns (snap – took a picture), a tree in the shape of a √ mark, a tree that looked like it had a face, a pipe sticking out of the earth, a distinctive toadstool, etc. Each mark along the forest I took pictures…more to remind myself of these clues once I got home. Later these pictures would be printed and were the bonus items for the kids to ‘seek’ in the scavenger hunt.
So now I had a place where kids could explore water, climb, and run free. . . but I also know my audience and knew that might not be enough. If there’s one thing I’ve learned raising boys, a physical challenge or activity is always a great idea. I only did three of these activities, but wish I had done a couple more. They were by far the highlight for me to watch and the kids to complete. I ripped up a sheet and a bolt of fabric and made fabric strips. These were used to mark the trees which look amazing in the forest! The fabric markers are great for the environment because they don’t cause damage to the trees and can easily be removed after the hunt is over. Each team was told to look for a different color of fabric so they didn’t mix-up their tasks. Here is how the fabric markers looked – I added a heart graphic because I love them.
When team 2 saw these green tree markers they knew a clue was nearby. At the base of three trees there were clues to:
1) Pickup a stack of burlap sacks under the clue, nominate 3 kids (there were 3 sacks) and these kids had to jump along the forest in the burlap sack until they reached the next clue. Watching the kids jump along the forest floor in their sacks was pretty awesome and a very popular activity!
2) At the next fabric marker, I left a tape measure under the clue card and the team had to measure the width of the tree and record the measurement in cm and inches.
3) The last marker was next to a creek with a fallen log. The team had to cross the log and if the person got even a drop of water on them…another team member had to complete the challenge. This was a big highlight too!
A few other ideas that would be great scavenger hunt activities are: have the team complete a leaf rubbing, measure an old growth tree with their bodies and count how many kids it takes to measure the tree, and/or remove the tree marker and select two kids to have a three-legged race to the next tree marker. Here is a picture of some burlap sack racing along the forest from my son’s party:
While each team was walking through the forest they had a book to record 4 sets of criteria: seek, find, listen, collect. It kept them busy and each team member kept passing around the check list of items to be searching for – great team work. Here are a few samples of my favorite from each category:
Seek! It’s important to tell kids that items to seek should not be touched or removed from the forest.
◊ animal tracks – what animal was it? ________________
◊ something faster than a snail
◊ poo – doesn’t matter what kind. (lots of laughter finding this one)
◊ item that begins with the first letter of the birthday child’s name
◊ a nurse log
◊ an old growth tree (takes at least three kids to wrap their arms around)
Find! These items were placed in a cloth bag and they are okay to be removed from the forest because they are no longer alive:
◊ fern
◊ bark
◊ a heart shaped rock
◊ a rock the size of the birthday boy’s hand
◊ feather
◊ a river rock (smooth)
Listen! At different intervals while we would stop and listen. When all the group members stopped talking we’d hear lots of noises that otherwise would have missed:
◊ a bird song
◊ running water
◊ people talking
◊ leaves crunching
◊ cards driving
◊ frogs
◊ crickets
Collecting! This was my favorite because each group was given a plastic bag and items that shouldn’t be in nature were to be placed inside. Basically these kids were cleaning up the litter from the forest during this portion of the hunt! Teams could list out each item they collected and then add why it didn’t belong in nature in their book, but we just discussed it every time something was found..rather than writing it down.
The last portion of the hunt I completed with my team at the 1/2 way mark. The planning of this Q&A portion of the scavenger hunt was so much fun for me because I called my local Parks Board and asked for their help. I wanted a ‘fun facts’ section of the scavenger hunt that would be interesting for the kids and also teach them awesome forest facts! I thought it was important to call my local parks board rather than just using Google so that the information would be related to the forest they were searching. Here are a sample of the questions and answers – aren’t they interesting?
1) What animal in the forest is known for their ‘super glue’? (Answer: if you run your finger along a slug, wave it in the air so the slime gets tacky, then put your finger against a rock, it will stick to the glue. Try it but be gentle to the slug!)
2) Name three tree types in the park.
3) How many mosquitoes can a bat eat in 1 hour a) 30 b) 200 or c) 600. The answer is 600.
4) Eagles use the same nest ever year – they just keep adding to it. At the end of their life, would the nest weight as much as a car? Circle Y or N. (The answer is Yes)
5) True or False. A strand of spider web is stronger than an equal thickness strand of steel. (Answer is True).
I remembered the first fact about the slug after a forest tour we did years ago. The rest came from a very stunned forest guide that had a crazed mother calling him on a Friday afternoon asking for help with her scavenger hunt. <grin> You gotta use facts that are interesting for kids and I thought these were great!
At the end of the scavenger hunt we probably could have tallied up the sheets, plastic collected, and questions answered but I didn’t. The boys had a great time, I loved watching them, and since we were at a park, the boys ate sandwiches and then played outdoor hockey and soccer before going home. Lots of fresh air, teamwork, and fun. The loot bags contained wooden decoders so the adventure inspired fun could continue after the party guests went home! I hope these steps give you a general guide of how to create a really fun scavenger hunt, but the most important part is to personalize it yourself!
Have you visited your local raptor recovery center? It would be a great outing over Spring Break and with our recent visit to O.W.L. with my son’s Grade 4 class, I discovered a new respect for an animal I already adore – owls. They have multiple superpowers (hearing in particular) and produce owl pellets – which are honestly one of the coolest science projects for children. They are like a dinosaur dig that you’d purchase at the toy store – you know where your child spends hours looking for the bones to complete a skeleton? Only an owl pellet is made from all compostable materials and the different learning options for children are endless. What is an owl pellet? It’s a popular belief that they are owl poo (that’s what I thought). But they are actually regurgitated parts of non-digestible prey from an owl. An owl has the ability to unhinge it’s jaw (like a snake) when it wants to eat quickly. It is able to eat larger prey this way like a small crow, rat, mouse, rabbit, etc. Because owls have two stomachs, they take the nourishment of what they’ve just eaten, but then use the 2nd stomach to separate the fur, bones, and tail. Then they cough up an owl pellet (like a cat with a fur ball) in the form of a pellet. The largest pellets are roughly the size of a child’s fist, but they can be much smaller too – depends on the size of the owl. The pellet looks like a lump of mud or poo, but really it’s a ball of mostly fur and skeleton matter.
My son’s class dissected owl pellets last week and it was amazing! With 30 kids in the classroom, you would expect a few children to be whining or complaining about how ‘gross’ this project was. Especially since after some pellets were dissected, there was a fluff of fur on desks that really resembled the prey. BUT – every single child in that classroom was totally excited and I only heard the words “COOL!” and “Look what I found” coming from desks. My son was lucky enough to find two skulls in his pellet which was amazing because you can actually make out the eye sockets and the curved nose and front two teeth of the field mouse inside:
Each child in the classroom put newspaper on their desk with a brown paper towel for bone collection. If you are doing this project at home, also have tweezers and a ziplock back to collect the bones. A few of the children could identify the bones they dug out of the pellet – the skulls, vertebrae, and pelvis were exciting to find.
When each child was finished their dissection and collection, we simply rolled up the newspaper and pellet matter and emptied into the compost. It was just like playing with a dinosaur dig toy like you’d purchase at the store, except this one is actual bones and there is no plastic or packaging to worry about. Bones went into a ziplock bag with the child’s name so the next day they’d be able to try and piece together the skeleton. There are many printables online to help with this – here is an example of this exercise from a pellet dissection in my son’s class!
I can’t wait to find or purchase more owl pellets for all my children to experience this amazing activity! Learning more about owls was very interesting and dissecting the pellets would be a memorable Spring Break activity.
A few weeks ago my twins celebrated their 6th birthday. We incorporated a really special party craft that I wanted to share for a few reasons: it is basically compostable, so party guests can return it to the earth when it gets ratty looking, the amount of imagination it inspired with the kids was amazing, and the supplies required where found for the most part in the forest. I am always totally inspired every time I walk into a West Coast forest – the amount of moss, ferns, and toadstools right now is breathtaking. I wanted a way to bring some of this beauty into the party give aways at the twins party. I mean really, it would just be too easy to go into the Green Planet Parties warehouse and start pulling out magical items. I wanted to challenge myself and incorporate a few of the fairy items from this popular category on the site, but also input some creativity. So voila – the concept of creating compostable fairy houses and wooden dolls was born and the effect was quite magical. So here is how you can construct the ultimate craft with a fairy themed soiree!
Collecting Supplies For Compostable Fairy Houses:
This was my favorite part of the craft. I got the opportunity to walk into our local Mall and rather than walking out with purchased goods, I went to all of the shoe stores and asked them for empty shoe boxes. Shoe stores collect many empty boxes during the day from customers that opt out of taking them home. They are just broken down and recycled, but I managed to collect close to 20 over a 2-day period. I would advise getting regular sized shoe boxes…not big ones from boots. Here is what the stack of boxes looked like pre-party.
After we had boxes collected (1 box per party guest), we headed into the forest and started collecting our nature. The bottom of each shoe box was going to be lined with moss. It’s easy to find thick, wet, beautiful moss in our local forest so we collected our moss and fallen twigs. Moss to line the bottom of the box and twigs to create rugs and ladders for inside the fairy house and fallen ferns to create a pretty design inside the house. I thought the ferns might look nice in small section in the fairy house glued to the side of the walls to give a shutter or the allusion of window blinds.
Making Wooden Fairies for Fairy Garden:
We then decided to include a wooden clothespin fairy for the girls to decorate inside their fairy house. We used all upcycled materials for these that included: wooden clothespins, tissue paper for wings, sharpie to draw faces and hair, fabric scraps to make clothing. We pre-painted faces (I did the faces and my girls did the hair) onto the clothespin dolls and we loved how they turned out. The ladies are whispering below how excited they are to get dressed and have a rest on their leaf bed.
The ladies continued to chat to each other about how they wanted to be dressed. Also included in the below picture is some inspiration to avoiding glitter to decorate the fairy wands. We found glass beads and glued them to the middle of the wooden wands (same beads we used for the pond) – loved the effect!
In order to ‘dress’ the fairies, we cut out rectangular strips of tissue paper. We slid the tissue paper up the clothespin opening, then fanned out wings. Then the girls used Green Glue and glued on the little bits of clothing I had pre-cut. The effect was lovely and I wanted the party guests to have a doll and some quality pieces from inside the house that they could play with for a long time. Here is a dressed doll after one of our guests finished gluing on clothes.
Putting Together Fairy Houses:
After the party guests finished making a doll, they painted a few quality pieces that would be reused from the fairy house (the shoebox, moss and twig pieces could later be composted) and they included, fairy doors and beds from Green Planet Parties. The beds had huge impact with the girls because they were able to lay their newly acquired fairy dolls and put them to sleep inside the box. Here are the fairy doors that each party guests painted.
A great idea if using a fairy door for your fairy house is to cut out an opening in the shoe box where the fairy door can be placed. It’s the entry point for all the magic inside the house to be contained! I did this for a few of the guests and they loved the effect!
While the guests were painting fairy doors and wooden wands, I was getting another table ready for the completion of the houses. The guest had their shoebox ready with moss inside, a leaf bed w/ pillow and twig ladder next to it to put inside the box, the fairy they had decorated, I put the guest’s name on the box, then they walked over with their fairy door and wand that was put into the box to dry. They started looking like this:
Another extra I had waiting to put into the box were blue glass rocks. Once a few were added to the corner of a fairy house it looked like a pond where the fairy could have a swim later.
Voila! Close the lid and the fairy garden/house/doll is ready to go home when your party guests. I wrote names on the outside of each box so it was easy when guests were picked up to find their box. With the shoe box lids closed, I loved watching the reaction of parents (probably thinking why is she giving me this?) but then I looked them in the eye and said “compostable fairy house” and the adult’s eyes lit up because they knew these take home gifts were something different and unique.
Prep time for these fairy boxes should be about two weeks before the actual party. You want to enjoy the process of going into the forest and searching for treasures. Try to find sticks, leaves, acorns that have already fallen onto the forest floor. One idea we had was to collect acorns and glue them to the head of each fairy doll but there weren’t any in our area this time of year. It would have been a cute accent but I love how the faces on the dolls turned out. A glue gun really came in handy with making the twig ladders – I would have loved to make and hang some windows with twigs in each box too. Using the glue gun also allowed me to not have to use glitter with decorating the wands. By adding a glass bead to the centre of the wooden wands, the girls just added some paint to them and we by-passed using glitter. I try to stay away from it because it’s plastic. I didn’t want this getting into the compostable materials inside the box.
We had a little over 15 party guests and it’s doable, but a smaller number of children is probably recommended for this craft. I divided the kids up into 2 groups otherwise it would have been overwhelming to orchestrate all of the little steps. It’s fun when you can take the time to listen to the kids and have them decide what all of the materials will be in their house: carpets from sticks, windows, ponds – very fun!
I write this article not as the owner of Green Planet Parties, but as a mom of two adorable little girls and a person with a serious Peter Pan complex; never want to grow up and someone that believes that fairies are real!
I love a good DIY and the key to successfully completing projects with children is to estimate enough time so the joy of crafting remains until the end. With 10 days to go until Valentines, these DIY projects are great for budgets and they’ve been tested and approved by kids! I also think about teachers and making their life a little easier with holiday card exchanges and this Valentine heart DIY project keeps life easy for teachers because they are not personalized! Instead they are hand sewn and a reusable decoration/card/keepsake that children will love to receive. Here is a picture of the finished project:
Reusable Valentine Instructions:
This is a great DIY if you have oodles of fabric scraps! I only needed to purchase embroidery thread and felt squares so the cost was minimal. Here is what you need: sharp needle with med sized eye hole, your choice of felt, scrap fabric, embroidery thread, lollipops.
First step is to cut out fabric and felt hearts. Remember how you cut out the perfect paper heart by folding it in half and cutting 1/2 the heart on the folded edge? Use this same method for cutting fabric and felt so each side matches. Older children and adults can easily free hand heart cut-outs but to help younger kids, trace out the heart with pencil for them to follow. My example is this great combination of camouflage fabric and brown felt. It’s important to know your audience and picking different fabrics can really help with enticing the boy crowd into participating with this craft. We made combinations that both my sons and daughters gravitated to and the comment from my 8 year old son was “cool heart”!
Second step is to lineup the fabric heart on top of the felt heart and hand-stitch. This is a great tutorial for first time sewers. For younger kids, put them on your lap and help them stitch. You will be amazed how quickly they learn! I purchased a few different colors of embroidery thread to give some pop to the fabric hearts: beige, red, purple, and pink.
Final step for kids is to insert a lollipop into a stitch that acts as a holder. The stitching at the back of the heart actually looks really awesome, but if you want to take this DIY one step further and finish off the back, cut out another felt heart, place against the back of the valentine and machine stitch around the outside. The machine sewing is a nice contrast against the inside stitching on the fabric heart and embroidery thread – and will hide the stitching and tie-offs.
I have to add my personal perspective on this craft. To complete our hearts we loaded up a basket with all the supplies and took them to our after school activities. Children from the hockey rink and soccer gym all came over and commented on which fabric was their favorite, wanting to help push the needle through the fabric, and commented “can you teach me to sew?” It was really lovely to see just how excited kids get with making things themselves and taking a Valentine DIY to the next level to incorporate basic sewing. I’m really excited to know how proud my kids will be to hand out these special Valentines to family and close friends.
Valentine Tableware DIY
If you are hosting a Valentine party or responsible for bringing disposable tableware to your child’s school for Valentine baking or treats, here is a great tableware DIY project! This aspect of Valentines party planning doesn’t have to be toxic for the environment with cheap plastic or styrofoam. Check out this fun, budget friendly, and earth friendly DIY project that looks unique and is fun for kids! If you are in charge of tableware, invest in cups, plates, and napkins that can be composted. Keep dyes and ink out of your compost by stamping these items with beet juice rather than using an ink pad. Here’s how!
Take a plain plate made from compostable materials such as paper or bagasse (sugarcane) and a rubber stamp. Instead of reaching for the ink pad, purchase a beet and slice off a piece. Dab the stamp against the beet juice and use to stamp the tableware. The effect is subtle, fun, and kids understand the concept about only returning organic materials back into the earth. This DIY goes quick and the kids have lots of fun! Keep slicing off fresh sections of the beet for more juice. ** Tip – this is also a great technique for naturally dying home made Valentines play dough **
For more tips for a Greener Valentines and unique ideas, check out the Mommy Footprint fan page or website. Have fun crafting!
As I write this post, I gaze out the window and see branches of nearby trees covered with snow. Nothing is more beautiful than the dusting of white stuff, but when you are snowed in with kids at home to entertain, thinking of activities can be a challenge. I’ve been reminded of how easy it is to romance the idea of having kids at home during snow days <grin> and how helpful it is to have fun activities in your back pocket for when they are bouncing off the walls. Here are two concepts I love – proven time and time again with both my daughters and sons at varied ages: marble runs and bird activities. Each of these activities can fill many hours and inspire nature and building. Bird Activities will be included in the next article: Snow Day Indoor Activities – Bird Fun.
Wooden Marble Run & DIY
Earlier this week I kept my kids home for a snow day. We played in the snow, but when it was time to come in, I had to think of something to keep all four busy. I dug out our wooden marble run and love the creative energy it creates – even for me! It’s very satisfying once you get a run built….and younger kids love watching the marbles race down the track. I also love how my Quadrilla marble run takes any size marble – but a warning, it can be frustrating for young children to build. Here is an example of our finished design.
Don’t have a marble run at home? NP! If you have an empty cereal box and some marbles, you can make your own! With making this Made By Joel marble run, the best part is creating the toy yourself which is always the case with easy and fun DIY projects. The talented dad from Made By Joel provides easy steps for making your own and is the king of fun projects that utilize things you already have at home! Image from the Made By Joel blog with directions here:
I haven’t tried the toilet paper marble run design – but I remember my boys loving a similar (but plastic) model at Science World so I know this would be a hit! There are a few of these on Pinterest that would be easy to do; a magnet version and one where you cut the toilet paper rolls in half and tape the wall! The below picture can provide some inspiration – picture credit here:
Snow, and lots of it seems to be Mother Nature’s way of telling us to stop and play. I try to take my cues from her and hope these DIY marble runs inspire some fun indoor family time!
