Create an Outdoor Story Hunt for Your Child this Summer
Reading Time: 9 minutes Listen to the podcast version:
Where adventure and literature collide!
One of the best ways to keep kids engaged and learning during the summer months is through reading.
By encouraging your child to read, you can help them develop important skills such as critical thinking, creativity, and empathy.
We know this already.
It has been thumped into our heads for years…we need to read to our kids.
We need our kids to read.
We need to encourage reading over the summer.
Sometimes, your child is just one of those kids who doesn’t really love reading.
I had one of those.
Well, what if I told you, you can take reading to the a whole new level?
What if you could turn your child’s love of literature, or incentivize them, with an outdoor adventure?
What is an Outdoor Story Hunt?
An outdoor story hunt is a scavenger hunt with a plot.
Children solve clues and puzzles based on a story.
Often, there is a background story that complements the story the hunt is centered around to explain why the children are going from one place to another or why they need to solve the puzzle.
The children must solve the clue to find the next location in the hunt and then be given more puzzles towards solving the entire hunt.
Planning the hunt
To plan an Outdoor Story Hunt, you will need to:
- Choose a story to base your hunt on.
- Decide on the location of the hunt.
- Write the clues.
- Hide the clues.
- Plan the activities.
Choose a Theme
Choose a ThemeWhen it comes to choosing a theme, your choices are limitless!
You can base your hunt around a popular children’s book, a genre, like adventure, or you can even do an outdoor story hunt based on a movie.
Now, seriously, I am not a fan of the last option, simply because I want our kids’s noses in books!
You will want to choose a story they have read or you can use the hunt as incentive to read the book; obviously you will not want to give any important bits away.
You can combine an outdoor story hunt with the summer reading challenge and create a fun hunt as the reward or incentive after your child has read a book.
If it had been my boys, and I said I would create an elaborate story hunt for every book they read over the summer, I would have been really busy!
It does not matter which theme you pick, only that you choose one.
Not only does a theme give direction and structure to the hunt, but it also helps ensure that the clues and riddles you create are relevant and engaging for your child.
Let’s start with an outdoor story hunt based on the book, The BFG by Roald Dahl.
You need a backstory to keep the players interested and understanding why they are moving from place to place.
First, Sophie and the BFG have been captured by the other giants.
The entire goal is to break out of giant country to visit the Queen of England.
Great! Now we have a goal.
Your story will be conversations between Sophie and the BFG about obstacles they face as they try to break out of giant country.
Another outdoor story hunt you can set up is based on genre.
Your child loves adventure stories, more specifically pirate stories!
Create a back story of three, for example, of the main pirates from your child’s favorite books and how they have to work together to find a treasure that will enable them to get off of a deserted island.
The obstacles can include finding food, water, and fire.
Another huge obstacle may be trusting each other.
You can use nautical terms and pirate language in your clues and puzzles.
The most important factors to consider when choosing your theme are:
1. Does it interest your child?
2. Do you know it well (if not read it)?
3. Can you create a backstory, puzzles, and clues around this theme?
Plan the Hunt
You have your theme and books you will be working from.
Now you need to decide where you will have your hunt.
This can be in your backyard, neighborhood, a park, the beach, a trail, etc.
Just make sure you have permission and the kids can be running around safely.
How many puzzles do you want your children to solve?
How long do your want the hunt to take?
One way the hunt can take a long time is by distance: the children have to cover a lot of ground or constantly be going back and forth to reach their new destinations and open a new clue.
Another way you can create a long lasting outdoor story hunt is by creating a lot of clues to solve.
Map it all out.
Just keep in mind the weather, the age of your children, and the time of day.
I know, you are thinking, Kara these are odd things to consider.
Well, remember, I had boys and my boys were very food oriented.
I also live in Arizona.
My boys were not going to go outside to do a scavenger hunt in a monsoon or in 98° weather.
They also could not have cared about almost anything when it was food time.
I would definitely schedule my hunt for a time when we had good weather, and since that cannot be controlled, I would make this an easy to reschedule type of hunt, and between 9-11 or 1-4.
Will you need anyone else?
Are you going to make this a “go to this location, find your clue, solve the puzzle and it will send you to the next location” type of hunt.
Or are you going to have people dressed up as characters from the book along the hunt’s course?
Having characters from the story would definitely appeal to the younger kiddos and keep them engaged longer.
Create Clues and Riddles
Create Clues and RiddlesTo create an engaging and challenging outdoor story hunt for your child, you will need to come up with clues and riddles that fit their age and abilities. The clues should lead them on a journey through the great outdoors, where they can explore and learn while having fun.
Here are some tips for creating clues and riddles:
1. Start with a theme or genre.
2. Keep it age-appropriate: You don’t want them to get too frustrated or bored.
3. Use nature as inspiration:You can hide a clue behind a tree or under a rock, or use the location of the sun to guide your child to the next clue.
4. Make it challenging: You want your child to feel challenged and proud of themselves when they solve each clue.
5. Have fun: Remember, the whole point of an outdoor story hunt is to have fun!
One observation I would like to note: if you are creating a really large and fun story hunt that will accommodate several groups, consider different routes.
This means that when one group solves a riddle they may be heading off to clue number 7, while another group may be headed to clue number 3.
This guarantees that one group cannot just tag along with another group.
Make it Interactive
The beauty of a story hunt is that its very nature is interactive.
Children move from one place to another.
Children solve various types of puzzles, riddles, and clues to advance in the game.
You can make it even more engaging and memorable for your child by encouraging them to act out certain parts of the story, draw pictures of their favorite characters, or even having them create their own version of the story.
By creating this interactive experience, you can help your child develop their imagination, creativity, and critical thinking skills.
Make it Educational
Your children are already primed to love this adventure!
It has clues, puzzles, is about a favorite book, and they are outside and moving the whole time…what is not to love!
You can easily sneak in educational bits.
Your puzzles can include math, science, and logic questions.
When the children are moving from one place to another, you can have a “Fun Facts” page come up.
These fun facts can be information about the author, true facts about animals, concepts, or historical events alluded to in the book.
Not only will this make the hunt more interesting, but children will find that they are enjoying learning without realizing it.
If your child loves puzzles, maze, and riddles get them this FREE mini activity booklet!
Free Activity Booklet
Challenges, Coloring, and Characters-So much fun!
- 5 Puzzles: Sudoku, Maze, Cryptogram, Word Search, & Double Puzzle
- 1 Character Coloring Page of Fox
- 5 Other Coloring Pages
11 FUN ACTIVITIES FOR YOUR CHILD!
What this Looks Like
I had the pleasure of participating in a story hunt in May of this year.
I was so excited!
I had already decided to talk about outdoor story hunts, but I had never actually participated in one.
Now I have and I wanted to break it down for you.
1. People formed teams ahead of time.
2. Each person in the team downloaded the Questo app, this is a company that creates hunts for you, but you pay for them and they are geared towards adults.
The story we did was, The Oz Escape, which is based on The Wizard of Oz.
3. Each team was timed, based on when they started that same day.
4. The clues took us all over, walking distance, downtown Prescott.
5. We would first get a GPS map of where to go.
6. On the way to the clues, we were given odd facts about L. Frank Baum.
7. When we were within, maybe 50 feet, we could unlock the clue.
8. We had one person read aloud the story that lead us into why we had to do that puzzle. For example, the story talked about Dorothy and the Tin Man being captured, the puzzle unlocked the cage door.
9. Each of the team members then tried to solve the puzzle.
When we had it, we would all enter the answer onto our phones.
10. With the right answer, the next GPS location unlocked and the cycle began again.
There was nothing to “win,” it was just a lot of fun.
At some of the stops we had to take a group picture, say silly words, balance on one foot, these kinds of things.
This company has figured out the marketing and the best way to make money with their hunts.
They use smart phones.
As parents, we obviously do not want our kids on electronic devices, we want them enjoying outside and engaging with others.
However, I thought this blow by blow might help you “see” the entire hunt better and spark some great ideas!
An outdoor story hunt is a fun activity that will get your kids moving and using their brains.
They can provide a fun and engaging way to encourage your children to read and explore. Your child will love these so much that they will beg for them.
This means you can use them as incentives for finishing their reading this summer!
Your child will not even realize they have convinced themselves to get their reading time in, no complaints.
So why not give it a try? You may be surprised not only by how much your child enjoys it, but also how much fun you have creating it.