Get outdoors and have some scavenger hunt fun: it's ideal for all kinds of situations and places!  It takes just a little bit of preparation and the children all love scavenger hunts whether in a small garden or a huge park.  Here are some ideas to get the children inspired outdoors no matter what their age!

Colour Hunt: Gather some things from round the house: toys, blocks, balls etc that are 4 different colours: red, green, blue and yellow.  Show the items to your child and sort them into piles by colour.  Keep one of each item and without your child looking, hide all the rest around our garden or around the park.  Send your child off to search for all the red items, then all the yellow etc.

Buried Treasure: collect some pebbles or pieces of dry pasta and cover them with silver foil to make them into shiny treasure.  Count them, and then hide each of the pieces in the garden.  Send your child off to find them and count them all back in at the end!  Perhaps if they find them all they win a piece of real treasure: a foil wrapped biscuit or a foil pouch of summer fruits to eat!

Shape Hunt: Make 16 cards and draw 4 coloured squares, circles, rectangles and ovals onto them.  Give one of each to your child and hide the rest.  Ask them to hunt for the others, matching them and naming them as they find them.

Letter Hunt: Write some letters on a page and ask your child to go off into the house or garden and find things beginning with that letter.  For A find an apple, for B find a ball, for C find a toy car etc.

Have fun!

Children love imaginative play and will enjoy our ideas for obstacle courses and treasure hunts!  You can adapt these ideas for indoor or outdoor play, and for the garden or a park.

Set up an obstacle course in the garden by taking a variety of items, such as balls, plastic toys (kids' garden tools or some basic toys from inside), string or rope, flower pots and anything else that might be found in the garden.  Create obstacles where your children have to balance, weave in and out of hurdles placed on the ground, jump over and climb under things.  Create a 'river' with two sticks placed a couple of feet apart and have your toddlers avoid the crocodiles in it by jumping over them.  Place a stepping stone in the middle that they must step on.  Have them weave in and out of flower pots to avoid a bear that's chasing them!  Make up different imaginary obstacles and your children will soon run riot with their own thinking!

If you're stuck inside, you won't have so much space but you can still create snake pits to jump over, furniture to manouvre around and other creative problems to tackle!

Create a treasure hunt by taking stones and wrapping them in foil.  Hide them around the garden or indoors and have your children search for them.  Keep your obstacles in place, so they still have to take care crossing the river, avoid the bears and so on!

You only need to invent a few different obstructions and imaginary scenes and your children will be happy running around for ages!