Easter Scavenger Hunt 2013

Instead of an Easter egg hunt,

this year

we had a scavenger hunt at Shaw Ranch.

My sister in law has a wonderful family

with an abundance of FABULOUS kids,

so I had lots of enthusiastic takers for the project.

My favorite thing to do with holidays

is to do fun, hands-on activities that teach

spiritual truths & values and historical heritage.

You can do this any time of year.

I'd love for you to copy this & add your own twists

and share about your experience!

The first thing I did was make little books.

I cut up old file folders that were too big for my file cabinet.

Then I hole punched them and tied colorful random ribbon strips

 that I had left over from other projects.

{Use whatever you have!  I did not buy anything specifically for this event.}

I hid challenges and little projects in Easter baskets and buckets all over the yard.

I had planned on doing it in our windbreak and spreading it out over a larger area

making the hunt a bit more challenging,

but it was cold, so . . .  we did it in the yard instead.

I gave instructions on the deck

and I had found some leftover prizes that I had from last year's Bible School.

Everyone who found all of the baskets

and did all of the challenges

got 2 prizes from my prize bucket.

Here we go!

The kids could do them in any random order.

There were no clues to where to find.

Just that they had 8 to find and complete.

Here's the first one:

The second was this:

I used plastic ziploc bags or lunch sacks in some of the baskets

to keep all of the items together.

I also have a sticker machine that I roll paper through to make stickers.

I typed up Bible verses or phrases for their books and made them into stickers.

Because it was cold out,

my masking tape and my ball point pens did not work very well,

but oh, well.

We had to have a sweet treat somewhere along the line,

so this Easter basket was full of eggs with Reeses peanut butter cups inside.

Here is another.

I have a large feather collection from 

turkeys, pheasants, prairie chickens, and other random birds,

so I used what I had to make something.

I had the feather as a reminder of God's protection.

I used a bumble bee for this one.

I have lots of little bumble bee pins from prizes I used to give,

so I decided to use those

with this story:

A friend of mine owns a flower shop

and when she was cleaning it out to do some remodeling,

she was throwing away all of this ribbon,

so I had lots on hand to make a rainbow stick

to remember that God keeps his promises and to worship Him.

The older kids helped me hide baskets,

helped with reading the cards,

and doing some of the more challenging projects.

Once upon a time,

I had found this little bit about Easter bunnies,

so I included it for them.

I didn't have any cotton balls,

so I had them use flocking to make a tail.

But cotton balls would work too.

I gathered sticks for the kids to make crosses 

with masking tape and some twine that my mom had given me.

Again, I just used random things that I already had

or could go out and find.

I really believe in making memories

while teaching valuable lessons.

I would much rather do that than have them all quiet

and in front of screens.

We all get enough screen-time!

This was so much fun for me and for the kids!

Hope you try something like it! USE WHAT YOU HAVE!