Many kids may still feel like they are still transitioning from fun summer days playing to long school days sitting in a classroom. It's also still a transition for many distance or hybrid learners back to a traditional school. One way to help keep kids motivated and engaged is to give them opportunities to get up out of their seats in a productive way. 

Scavenger hunts are fun but can be a little intimidating as they seem like they'd take a lot of planning. They don't have to! Here are a couple of ways to structure this active and effective learning activity. 

What to do:

You can adjust this activity to work with a number of different subjects like math, spelling, or language arts, and almost any skill.

  1. Type a number of problems on a worksheet. These can be word problems, vocabulary words or scrambled spelling words (as a few examples).  Use a slightly larger than normal font size and leave a good amount of space between each problem. You'll be cutting them up.  
  2. Each problem or question should be no more than a few sentences so you can keep kids moving. For example, the question might ask, "what time is it on the clock pictured?" Draw a small clock with hands at 12 and 3. (On their answer sheet, children will write "three o'clock.") Write about 15 to 20 problems — depending on how long you want the activity to take.
  3. Create a sheet where students can record their answers. The number of response spaces should match the number of problems you created. If you wrote out 15 questions, you should have 15 blank lines for responses. 
  4. Cut out each problem or question you wrote and tape them around the classroom.  For older students, you can hide the questions in more difficult spots. For younger students,  you can make the hiding spaces rather obvious.
  5. Hand each students a response sheet and a pencil. Instruct students to quietly walk around the room looking for questions to answer. 

When they have found all the clues and written they're responses, they can exchanged papers with a partner and correct some one else's paper. 

Some suggestions for the kinds of questions you can ask:
  • Comprehension questions for a book or novel study
  • Vocabulary words
  • Scrambled spelling words the kids have to unscramble
  • Math word problems
  • Math equations
  • Social studies facts/students have to put each even in chronological order

This simple lesson is easy to create and works well at all ages. If you have the opportunity to hide some clues outside, why not let them get a bit a fresh air as well?!

How do you get kids up out of their seats but still focused on learning? Let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear from you.

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