Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions
Michael and I have six children between us, so between us, we have a few suggestions for making trips for young ones (and adults) easier, more fun, and even a little educational. We have added suggestions for different age groups in the hope that you can utilise our Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions to make your travels easier and less stressful.
Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions has been divided into different topics in an attempt to make it more user friendly. Topics include: driving; camping; beach; colours etc.
Use Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions with your childs age and intellectual intelligence in mind and adjust accordingly. Suggestions for thought provoking questions have been added for older children.
This is purely a guide to assist you when you are short on time and need quick kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions.
Driving Bingo
Games like this are really important as they get kids to focus on the red light and the motorbike, things that are easy to miss when they start driving.
31% of road fatalities in the first half of 2023, were motorcyclists.
This is far above the national average (Qld police news August 2023).
If you make them aware when they are younger and it will be instinctual when they get older and reach driving age.
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Any town, any country
Within any town you can find a:
- person walking a dog
- a pregnant lady
- a person with grey hair
- a baby
- a person wearing a suit
- a grandma and grandpa
Being aware of your surroundings is important.
It is important for kids to notice the people around them.
Remember, a stranger is not always someone who looks scary. Make sure your kids are aware and pay attention to the people around them.
As they get older you can change the games around and narrow down the search criteria. For example:
- someone with a tattoo or piercing;
- someone wearing a certain colour;
- a lady wearing a business suit;
- the grandma and grandpa that are holding hands, etc.
Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
City days
Walking through a city you might be able to find:
- a bird
- a spider, or a spider web
- a cat
- an ant
- a dog
- a fly
This game brings the surrounding nature to the front of the childs mind.
Expand on this topic as the child gets older.
What else can you find in a city?
Turn it into a conversation and ask thought provoking questions.
– Are there homeless people? What is a homeless person?
– Is there someone with a physical disability (i.e. in a wheelchair)? What does this mean? What obstacles do you think these people face daily?
– Is there someone who has a beard? I wonder how long it took to grow that? How do you think he keeps it clean?
– How do you react to XYZ?
– How does it make you feel when you see a YZ?
– How can you help someone who is XY?
– What would it mean to you if you had ABC?
Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Country life
In the country you will be able to find a wider range of animals:
- cows,
- sheep,
- horses,
- goats, etc.
You can even find a wider range of vehicles:
- tractors,
- harvesters, etc.
Adjust this game according to where and when you are travelling.
For smaller children, you could have cartoon looking animals, then as the kids get older, you could get them to find animals that are harder to find, like a certain breed of dog, or type of bird.
Again add the thought provoking questions as your children get older:
What is that piece of machinery and what do you think it does? You can even stop (if safe) and take a photo to upload to Google Lens to identify what you are looking at so it can be identified the next time you see one.
There is no such thing as useless knowledge.
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Flowers and plants
Start with colours or flower types, then as the children get older, you can start to say:
- find me something that is NOT “X”, as shown with the tree that is NOT green.
Adjust your bingo/scavenger hunt to suit the childrens ages and intellectual ability.
When your child gets older you can also start to discuss subjects like:
– Why do you think that flower is that particular colour? It could have something to do with pollination (certain bugs are attracted to certain colours etc), or maybe it is a flower that will turn into a fruit.
– How long do you think it took for that tree to get that big?
– I wonder what animals would call this tree home?
– Which fruit do you think this tree will produce?
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Time and counting
Learning to tell the time is important, even though most clocks nowadays are digital.
Make it easy and fun with games. For example:
- it is 7 O’clock and you have a leaf as the picture, therefore the scavenger hunt would be to find 7 leaves.
- it is 3 O’clock and you have a picture of rocks, therefore you need to find 3 rocks.
Fun with colours
Kids love colours.
Primary colours are good to start with for the younger children:
- Blue,
- Red
- Yellow
This is also a good way to identify if your child has colour blindness.
As your child gets older, expand the colour range to include different shades,
i.e. purple can be lilac, lavender, grape etc.
You can have a bingo game specific to different coloured things:
- doors
- animals
- mailboxes etc
You can even have a bingo card full of things that are all one colour:
- red hair
- red mailbox
- red door
As your child gets older you can even include identifying colours together with Art and Craft activities (paints) like:
- find something that is the colour of blue and yellow mixed together (green).
- find three things that are the colour of blue and red mixed together (purple)
Add some Art and Crafts to the fun
A suggestion with the last idea is to buy some paints (watercolours are easy to clean up and relatively cheap to buy) and while you relax after driving to a new location/or set up camp/make dinner, and get your child to experiment with the colours. i.e. what happens when you add a bit of white to the red? You get pink, that is great, can you find me something pink? They can even guess what differently mixed colours will create, or you can ask questions like:
- how do you think we can make orange?
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Opposites and more
For this game you can use descriptive meanings, or metaphors of the words.
- The drums are loud when you bang on them.
- The baby is quiet when it sleeps.
Alternatively,
- it is bigger than Big Ben, or
- smaller than a mouse.
Metaphors can be used to create vivid imagery, exaggerate a characteristic or action, or express a complex idea.
Have fun with this one.
You could say:
- find me 5 things that are loud/quiet; or
- 5 things that are bigger than XYZ,
- find me 5 things that are not round, etc.
Shapes
Learning shapes is great for any child to learn.
You could start easy such as round and square, but then increase to 3 dimensional shapes such as cubes.
Alternatively, you can say, with these items (tree branches or buttons etc.), make a square, then make it fun by adding arms/ears/legs/eyes etc. using a different material.
Carry on with the thought provoking questions:
- start with a square for younger children then once they learn about 3 dimensional things ask what will this shape become i.e. a square becomes a cube.
Expand on that.
- What does the cube look like? A box, thats right.
- What do we use boxes for?
- Where can we find a box?
- Can we make one?
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Same word, different meaning
A play on words
Hard – it could be something that FEELS hard, or something that is hard to do. For example: the rock feels hard, but it would also be really hard to push one up a hill.
Hot could be hot to eat, or hot to touch.
Thought provoking questions can be asked here too:
Cold can be cold weather or eating a snow cone.
- What do we do when the weather gets cold?
- Do we put on a jumper?
- Other places in the world get that cold that they have snow/have indoor fire places/only get a couple of hours sunshine every day,
- How do animals stay warm (i.e. a duck) or
- What happens to our bodies when we eat the snow cone?
- Did we get a brain freeze?
- Why did that happen? or
- If we eat the chilli, what will happen to our mouth/breathing etc?
- How can we make it not burn so much?
- Why does drinking a glass of milk help?
As mentioned above, Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Beach life
While your child is little, make the game fun and easy:
- find 6 people who have water bottles
- find 5 people with sunscreen with them
- did someone bring lunch with them in an Esky?
While you are getting ready to go to the beach, get a bingo card made up so they can prepare themselves:
- swimmers on
- sunscreen on
- hat
- towel
- water bottle
- shoes
This will keep them pre-occupied while you get yourself ready. You can pack a special treat for the beach if they tick off all items before you are ready.
As the kids get older, you can teach them about beach safety:
- show them what a rip looks like and how to identify it,
- where to swim (between the flags) etc.,
- what to do if you get in trouble?
Turn this into an educational game. Ask them where you should be sitting and swimming and quiz them on the reasons why they chose the spots they did. Their replies may surprise you.
Camping
When the kids are little you can use a bingo card as a packing device. Do up a bingo card with a list of things you want your child to pack and get them to tick it off when it is packed into their bag.
A packing list would start with the basics:
- Toiletries (toothbrush, soap and depending on the kids age and level of independence you can add items such as deodorant etc.);
- Sleeping items (sleeping bag, pillows, pyjamas);
- Favourite items and/or comfort toys;
- Clothing ( will it be raining, will you be swimming, will it be cold or hot);
- Shoes, what kind of shoes will you need to the area you are going to and the activities you will be doing;
- Food (make them in charge of remembering something they will want such as the marshmallows); etc.
As the kids get older, ask the thought provoking questions:
- What is something we could do with a pine cone? Did you know that you can pine cones burn well when they are dry and they make good kindling.
- What would you do if you forgot to bring your sleeping bag?
- What would you do if it started to rain and your tent was leaking?
Make it age appropriate and suitable for your child’s learning development.
Kids activities: Bingo and Scavenger Hunt suggestions are just that, suggestions. Adjust any of the activities as you see fit so that they may suit your individual family.
Grocery shopping and food
Find out what your childs considers yummy and yucky food.
My youngest childs favourite food was peas, corn and strawberries.
Everyone is different.
You could say, find me a food that is yellow and it is not allowed to be a banana.
Tonight we are going to eat only food that is, for example, green and red, and get them to help you find the specific coloured items at the supermarket. You will find out just how smart they are when they bring you the container of mint ice cream stating that it is green, so they can eat it for dinner!
If your child asks what a specific food is, buy it and allow them to try it; let them be a part of coming up with the recipe to taste to it.
I remember being with my children and they were looking at the lychees; they were discussing how it looked and felt funny. One of the staff members came over and open up one each for each of them to try. It was the new favourite food for a while after that!
Thought provoking questions/comments in the grocery store include:
- Are people paying with cash or card or are they using the apps on their phones.
- How many people now days do you see still paying for their groceries with cash?
- Are there still lots of people walking into the store without their bags and having an arm full of groceries when they leave?
Alphabet fun
You can play alphabet games in many forms:
- alphabet bingo
- alphabet scavenger hunt
- alphabet shopping
- number plate game
Have fun and let the little ones imagination go wild!
This game can be made specific to different locations:
- the supermarket
- the outdoors
- even inside your house on a cold wet rainy day
Human emotion
Faces and being able to recognise emotion on peoples faces.
Ask your child to someone who is:
- happy
- sad
- confused
- bored
- angry
- funny
Being able to recognise emotion in a persons facial expressions is important for a childs development.
Not being able to identify facial expressions could be an early indicator of your child being neurodivergent.
I remember my kids playing a game in the car called “sweet or sour”.
They would wave to people and their reaction would tell them if the person was sweet or sour.
This was often where pulling funny faces would come into play, in both directions!