Scavenger Hunt for Kids in Central Park

Sean was a "pre-teen by family association" for the day!
Sean was a “pre-teen by family association” for the day!

Time really is flying. When my husband Reggie and I were dating, we led the Pre-teen and Young Teen groups at our church. It was such a fun time. We had the best team of youth workers on our our team and the kids had such fun, big personalities. Fast forward about 15 years and now our oldest son Michael is a part of the Pre-teen group. (How did that happen so quickly???)

When it was time for Reggie and I to plan an activity for Michael’s group, we went back to one of our old favorites…a photo scavenger hunt in Central Park. Things have changed a bit, but it was still a lot of fun. For instance, we used Polaroid cameras 15 years ago to capture the images. We used camera phones this time. The premise was the same though – to get the kids out of their comfort zones. While we used the Matthew 7:7 “Ask, Seek, Knock’ principle, this type of scavenger hunt for kids can be used for any large kid gathering. (While the kids did all of the work – asking, the tasks and the picture taking – we did have at least 1 adult/parent with each group for safety reasons.)

In case you want to throw a photo scavenger hunt for kids this summer, below are the “rules” and photos that we did…

At the end, we had a group of parents (whose kids were on different teams) add up the points. Each member of the winning team received a small gift – Dunkin Donut gift cards. Meanwhile, everyone received a bottled water and snack. You can change the rules up to meet the needs of your group. This is just a general guideline. Everyone seemed to have a great time and created some cool memories – especially the pyramids.

(We have also done AMNH and zoo scavenger hunts in the past. In NYC, there are so many cool ideas for a scavenger hunt for kids!)