Create a Springtime Treasure Hunt

  • By: The DIG for Kids
  • Time to read: 3 min.
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Organising a spring time treasure hunt combines so many fun activities in one project. The children get plenty of exercise outdoors, they take note of the natural world, it’s educational and you can help to incorporate lots of exciting arts and crafts ideas too. A spring time treasure hunt can last for anything between a few minutes and a few hours or even a few weeks. With all these exciting things taking place, it’s one of the best ways to welcome the new season with oodles of happy, family memories.

Where to Start?

Focus their minds first and think about some of the themes and ideas you can use in this exercise. Begin by sitting with your children and talking about the start of the new season. Take a large piece of paper and list all the things that you associate with spring, for example:

  • blossom
  • daffodils
  • tadpoles
  • lambs
  • rabbits
  • sunshine & showers
  • nests
  • leaves & buds

If you want to extend this part of the exercise, make a small spring book with the children by gathering their drawings and paintings of these springtime signs and making them into charts or booklets they can work with during their treasure hunt.

The simplest treasure hunt is to encourage them to tick off each of their items as they find them; this is called a scavenger hunt. They don’t need to collect any of the items. This would be impossible with some items (sunshine) and illegal with others (nests, wildflowers)! Instead, issue each child with a sheet of stickers. They can then attach a sticker to the corner of each picture item they find.

Treasure Trove

If they are going to physically collect the signs of spring, you must make sure they are supervised. This ensures they don’t start disturbing animals or picking wild flowers. However, they can collect certain things, maybe bits of blossom they have found in the garden or young leaves. Sometimes, you can find a perfectly empty nest on the floor at the end of spring. If they wish to collect these little treasures, make a trove using a small shoebox which has been covered with bright paper and filled with straw. The outside is decorated with paint, stickers or anything that appeals to the children.

Snap Happy

Another way to hunt for the signs of spring is by issuing each child with an inexpensive disposable camera. This is really useful for things they would like to record but can’t disturb. Help them to make and customise their own scrapbook so they can display their photographic evidence. The outside of the album looks lovely if it’s decorated with pressed flowers from the garden.

A spring collage

Use all the findings of the springtime treasure hunts to make a fabulous collage at the end of the exercise. This can make use of a variety of arts and crafts. Pressed flowers are incorporated in the collage alongside rainbow or butterfly paintings, leaf prints, magazine cuttings, photographs and maybe even poems, inspired by their findings.

A spring time treasure hunt is a memorable way to celebrate the start of a new season. At the end of the activity, the children would have enjoyed lots of fresh air, fun with friends and family and they’ll have a great portfolio of arts and crafts projects to show off too!

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