Nature Scavenger Hunt

Nature Scavenger hunt Summer Hols 2014 — Nature Scavenger Hunt

So the summer holidays have hit! Today is the first official day off, although Bo’s perfect attendance at school last term was ruined by becoming ill for the last two days. And we have started this afternoon by going on a scavenger hunt with a nature theme, one of the items listed in my 15 Top Summer Holiday Activities for Kids.

The idea is that Bo was to find a number of nature/outdoor related items (see list below) while we were out for a walk (she had mine and her mums help) in order to complete the hunt. None of the listed items would cause harm to the local environment if taken (with one exception that was put back as soon as we could without harm).

Nature Scavenger Hunt – The List

2 Long Straight Twigs

4 Leaves From Different Trees

4 Leaves from Different Plants
1 Pine Cone

An Interesting Looking Stone

5 Daisies

5 Buttercup’s

1 Snail (alive and unharmed)

1 Four Leafed Clover

Quite a challenge for a five year old. Some items may seem odd but they are so that we can create a nature log tomorrow (the sticks, leaves and flowers will all be used to adorn the front cover) which Bo will then be able to fill out over the coming weeks as we have our wildlife adventures.

Nature Scavenger Hunt – The Hunt

And so after a morning of work for Zoe, we set out for a wander around the lake list in hand ready to see if we could complete our challenge (actually Bo and I set out and met Zoe on our walk, although we had only found one item).The first items we located were number one on the list two straight twigs, but it wasn’t long till we had added the leaves from plants and some of the tree leaves, but Bo had become occupied popping “Granny Popout of beds” (they must have a real name) those white flowers that grow on vines where if you squeeze the base the flower hops out, she thought this was great.

Bo examining these flowers for the first time.

Pop

We pressed on searching for our missing items and soon had all the leaves, as well as most of the buttercups and daisies, I thought these would be quite easy to come by but the grass around the lake had recently been mown so there were not many to find.

remining finds

We added the stone and remaining flowers and began the tricky search for a four leafed clover (a search that proved un-fruitful). After giving up pretty quickly we decided to head to the stream, as it enters the lake, to look for snails. And quickly found one nestled in amongst the reeds and long grasses.

Not wanting to disturb it we left it alone and headed off to look at the local horse paddock. Bo has become obsessed with a horse that lives there.

Giving up on the clover and pine cone (We could have found one if we had headed off the path around the lake, but there are no pines where we walked so was rather silly of me to add it to the list).

I’m sure we will try again in the holidays with a different list.

The Items we found (or some of them) went on to be used in making a Nature Notebook for Bo.

The Final Haul

The Local Horse

Bo and the Horse

After More attention

Nature on the Walk

While on our scavenger hunt we did do a spot of nature watching, and saw some lovely insects, including numerous butterflies (mainly Gatekeeper and Meadow Brown), lots of Dragonflies (Common Blue and Blue-tailed damselfly the most common but also a few larger ones including a nice Southern Hawker), and lots of flies of varying types [See photos below].