Family Vacation Scavenger Hunt
/I wanted to do a fun game with my grandkids on our recent family vacation to Hawaii. I decided on a scavenger hunt and found these tiny rubber animals, fish, and birds at “Teton Toys” located at Farmington Station, here in Utah. They are made from “Safari Ltd.” www.safariltd.com You can purchase them individually, and they have many more choices than the ones I used for our scavenger hunt.
I made up a little card for the kids to check off the things they found each day. It didn’t take up hardly any room in my suitcase, and it worked well for kids ranging in age from 3 to 15.
The first day of our vacation we all sat around the table outside on the lanai. I explained how the game would work, and gave each of them a little zippered pouch.
Inside the pouch was a $20 bill just for fun, a pen, and the card with each kids name on it, and a list of all the animals they needed to find.
The rules of the game were this: If they saw a picture of the animal, or read the name of the animal somewhere, they got one point. If they saw or heard the actual animal they got two points. At the end of each day we would gather and they would show me their cards with the animals they had marked off.
This is when I gave them the little rubber animal for them to keep in their zippered pouch. They could keep a tally of how many animals they saw. As an incentive for them to mark off all the animals, they could earn an additional $20 bill as soon as they crossed off all the animals on their card. The person with the most tally marks at the end of the week, earned the grand prize of one more $20 bill.
Our two oldest granddaughters took this seriously! They made a list with animal emoji’s on their phones, and kept track that way. They both ended up with over 700 tally marks each, with only 50 points separating them. The five younger kids each had over 100 tally marks!
When I bought the toys, I thought the goat would be the most difficult one to find. They found that the first day in a painting in one of their bedrooms! The hardest one to find surprised all of us! There are no hummingbirds on the islands of Hawaii! And we couldn’t even find a picture of one anywhere on the island.
So to finish up the game, the front desk at our resort “Koloa Landing” was kind enough to print a picture of one for me. I took it back to our room and left it sitting on the counter waiting for the first grandkid to discover it. That didn’t take long. They all received their second $20 bill a couple days before we left to come home. I called the game the morning before we came home, and had all the kids bring me their final tallies.
We all had fun searching for the items on the scavenger hunt. What animal had the most tally marks? Birds! There are an incredible amount of roosters and chickens on Kauai. Rumor has it, that two hurricanes in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s tipped over the domestic chicken coops releasing all the chickens. These chickens got together with the wild native ones, and a new breed of chicken evolved. The males are stunningly beautiful, however not at 5:30 in the morning when they all start crowing!
Games bring LIGHT, laughter, and fun to family outings of any kind. So come up with your own scavenger hunt to kick off the end of school and the start of summer, or figure one out for your family reunion/vacation specific to the place you are traveling. This was a quick and easy game to put together, and the kids had so much fun earning their animals. They all played with them the entire vacation. The memories we created will be cherished for years to come.
Look for our next summer giveaway coming next week! This is a fun one, so be sure to like and share! Have a great week!
Love Ya, Les :)