Get Outdoors: Scavenger Hunts Are Good for the Body and Soul

Children who spend time outdoors have better physical, mental, and emotional health.

Exposure to natural settings enhances creativity while lowering stress and anxiety. EduardSV/shutterstock

“Time in nature is ... an essential investment in our children’s health (and also, by the way, in our own),” writes Richard Louv in his landmark book “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.” According to Louv, a lack of contact with the natural world negatively affects a child’s physical, emotional, and mental health—and generally impoverishes their experience of the world.

One simple way that you and your child can engage more deeply with the natural world is by conducting an outdoor scavenger hunt. Many benefits flow from this goal-oriented outdoor activity.

The Benefits of Outdoor Play

The Child Mind Institute agrees with Louv that outdoor time is essential to healthy development, citing research that shows spending time outdoors is not just beneficial—it’s a necessity. “Most of the studies agree that kids who play outside are smarter, happier, more attentive, and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors.”

The soft stirring of pine trees, the gurgling of a clear stream, the kiss of waving grass, and the wild, lonesome call of a hawk—these soothe and focus the mind in a way that little else can.

Time spent in nature fosters confidence, creativity, and imagination in children. Outdoor play tends to be less structured than indoor play, affording children an opportunity to create, problem-solve, and take initiative. Their senses are sharpened by seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and even tasting. Indoor activities stimulate the senses less.

Louv wrote, “As the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, and this reduces the richness of human experience.”

Raw experience of the world through deep sensory contact with nature forms the basis of all learning and wisdom, according to educator John Senior. “We are a rooted species,” Senior wrote, “rooted through our senses in the air, water, earth and fire of elemental experience.” And elsewhere he wrote, “If [our senses] are poorly ordered, the intellect can result only in error.” According to Senior, who drew on traditional philosophers such as Aristotle, healthy sense experience forms the substratum for thought itself.

Time outdoors also improves kids’ academic abilities, eyesight, social skills, and self-discipline, according to the Natural Learning Initiative.

How to Mastermind a Scavenger Hunt

There are many ways to set up an outdoor scavenger hunt, including using our ready-made list. Your hunt could focus on specific organisms, such as insects, birds, or flowers. Or, you could search for different flora and fauna. With some hunts, the little searchers can collect the items and bring them back, but for other types of searches, a simple checklist is better. We don’t want them trying to capture and bring back all the birds on their list!

On her website dedicated to children’s play, psychologist Amanda Eldridge advised giving children a small container they can use to collect specimens, such as an egg carton or an Altoid tin. You can assign specific colors or categories to each compartment and have the child fill it accordingly.

If children aren’t collecting specimens, they could take pictures of each item or animal instead. However, if the goal of the activity is to reduce screen time, consider leaving the phone or camera at home.

Hunts can also be organized by color. Direct your child to find items from nature that match all the colors on their palette.

Another idea is to search by adjective, instructing children to find one item that’s “rough,” one that’s “soft,” one that’s “shiny,” one that’s “wet,” and so on.

If you have a group of more competitive children, you could turn the scavenger hunt into a race. For certain children, this might be the right way to motivate them to get outside. For others, though, it could prove discouraging and distracting, so you have to know your audience.

If you’re looking for a way to quickly get started with an outdoor scavenger hunt and you don’t have much time to prepare, simply print off the list below (field-tested by me and my daughter!):

1. An acorn
2. Evergreen needles
3. A pinecone
4. A tree stump
5. A feather
6. A bird
7. A bug
8. An earthworm
9. A furry animal
10. A nest
11. A bud or a flower
12. A leaf
13. Something soft
14. Something round
15. Something red
16. Something blue
17. Something wet
18. Something squishy
19. Something hard
20. Something beautiful

I hope this list provides a starting point for more outdoor explorations, activities, hikes, and wanderings in the woods—the golden hours of childhood. Good luck on your adventures.