Fun Teen Scavenger Hunts

When you are not considered a child anymore and are looked at as more of a young adult, the idea of having fun is a little different for you. Only a few years ago it might have been fun to run around the backyard all day and just play tag or army men with your siblings, but now that you are older, things have changed. Finding something to do with your time might be filled with a boyfriend or girlfriend, after school sports, a paper route or even just making sure you are getting your homework done. Many things change as you get older and getting through school is one of the top priorities in life. You are in high school and many times there are events planned based on school spirit and things like the homecoming football game. Did you ever think that your high school would hold a scavenger hunt type event during homecoming week? They are easy to setup, fun to participate in and could even be used as a tool to learn a little something as well.

In the event that you would like to plan a fun scavenger hunt at the school you are attending, you must take into consideration a number of things. What time of the day are you going to have this event? Sometimes, school officials will set aside the right amount of time that can be used for homecoming activities and things of that nature. This might be a great time to get the scavenger hunt rolling. Because scavenger hunts for adults can be completely custom, you could have the event last all week. There are two different types of hunts that work well, including photo challenge and riddle clue scavenger hunts. The riddle clue scavenger hunt can be based on your school directly by using clues that only your student body would know about. For the photo challenge scavenger hunt, you would basically have clues to items that need to be found and have those playing along take a photo of the item rather than actually collect it.

You would have to work on when you are going to get a planning group together to make up the clues, the rules that everyone should follow and even have a few prizes to give the students a reason to play along. Your planning group should decide when the event is going to take place, like during the homecoming week. You could easily plan certain themes for the scavenger hunt or just keep it straight forward and all about the school spirit. When getting together to plan for the scavenger hunt, you should decide which type you are going to choose. It could be a riddle based or photo challenge based hunt and that will determine how you layout the clues. Once you have the basic information figured out, you should decide if you are going to have rules, run it with a time limit and what prizes you are going to award the winning team. You could also decide at this time whether you are going to go with a boys vs. girls or freshmen vs. seniors theme for the adult scavenger hunt.

Prizes might seem like an easy thing to come up with, but you have to think about things that are going to entice the students to play along, while at the same time not cost you an arm and a leg. Excellent prizes might include a gift card to a favorite local cafe or restaurant that can be used for a night out on the town with friends, or even custom made football jerseys that include the winners last name. The jersey idea is a good one for those that are not on the football team, but would be happy to see their name on one. There are many ways that you can operate the scavenger hunt at the school. You could send students to various classrooms in search of odd items that you know are only in those rooms. You could also make the clues as a part of the assignment in a classroom. Having students get a part of the clue in each of the classrooms they visit throughout the day leading them to the item by the end of the day is a good way to keep people involved all throughout the day. You could confine the hunting to the books kept in the school library, that way you have the most control over the scavenger hunt and all of the teams are kept in one room rather than spread all over the building.

One very unique way that you could use the scavenger hunt is as a fundraiser for the football team. Give out clues to an ultimate prize item and because the clues are very general and lead to something well worth the time, you could sell clues for $1 each. Take the money and donate it to the school football team so that they can get new helmets or a training session at a local gym. The fundraiser idea can be applied in many ways, but the ultimate goal is to have teams looking for certain items while trying to win a prize of some kind.

There are many different people throughout the school that could set up the event including the principal, teachers, student council, football team, coaches or just a group of interested students. No matter what group gets together to figure out how the scavenger hunt is going to go, the most important thing is to make sure there are enough supplies for everyone. That means you need to have copies of all the clues, cameras for each team if you decide to go that route and even bags to collect items that need to be found. Running short on supplies is going to make for an unorganized event right from the start.

Besides all of the different types of people that you could have running the show, there are many ways that you could twist how the event will work. You could award prizes to one winning team only, or spread them to the top 3 teams. You could decide to award the top team and the bottom team, but keep that prize a surprise so that teams are not trying to be in last place. If you are going to have a photo challenge hunt, you could include photos that are found in older yearbooks from the library or even photos that might be hanging in offices and classrooms. One very unique way to operate the scavenger hunt would be to run it in a relay format. One team member takes a clue and when they find the item and return to the group the next person is able to do the same, all while trying to finish the scavenger hunt first. Just like timing how fast you can complete all the items on the list, you could have a time limit on the event so that players are not taking all day. You could also pass the clues out to teachers and then have them read them to the students if they ask for them. This way you are not leading them directly to the item, but you are giving them a chance at clues that could.

In summary, in order to run a themed scavenger hunt at your school, you will need to do quite a bit of planning. The event can take place over one day or week, but you are going to need the cooperation of many people at one time in order to pull that off. If you are stuck with how to get clues for your scavenger hunt, you could always search the internet for more information or guides to send you in the right direction. Doing so would take some of the guess work out of the deal and give you time to focus directly on having fun. Scavenger hunts for adults are a little different compared to scavenger hunts that are planned for children. Remember that if you like having scavenger hunts, there are many ways that you can incorporate them into just about any single event that you might be a part of. In most cases, they fit well with birthday parties, anniversaries, camping trips, going to the beach or even as a ladies night out.

Step One: Choose a Location

This is a simple one! You need a place to begin your scavenger hunt. For teenagers, you can pick a plethora of areas, but that depends on their age. If they are of driving age, you can span the scavenger hunt over a couple of miles, sticking in the same town. But if they aren’t able to drive, it’d be best to stick to someplace like maybe a shopping center.

Step Two: Invitations!

Now, you’ll want to begin inviting your hunters. You can do this any way you want. A lot of people prefer email invitations, but paper ones are great, too. For teens, most use their phones often, so text invitations work too, but a good idea is to get their parents involved too so you can better communicate with them!

For parents, you want to make sure you let them know if they are invited to do the hunt as well, or if they are just dropping their children off. You don’t want an awkward situation to ensue when you expect one situation and all the parents expect a different one.

Also, please add a designated drop off/pick up spot and time for the parents!

Step Three: Parent Volunteers

You’ll want to recruit parent volunteers to be chaperones on the scavenger hunt. Each group of teens should have a chaperone for safety reasons. Depending on the size of your hunt, you can maybe have one parent to 2-5 teens. For this, you’ll just have to judge it by how many people you end up having.

Step Four: Make the scavenger list! (And check it twice.)

**Before you start your list, make sure whatever you decided does not get the participants in way of any danger or trouble!**

Now that that is out of the way, feel free to let your mind wander on what you want on your hunt. I am going to list example scavenger hunts, but of course you can cater it to your own needs. If you would prefer ready-to-use clue sets, you might want to check out photoscavengerhunts.com for clues in an easy to use PDF format. However, if all you need are some simple challenges, bellow are a few easy hunts:

Animal-Themed Teen Photo Scavenger Hunt List

This one is normally catered to children, but for the teenagers it’ll be a little more difficult and will include other aspects to it!

Location: Local Zoo

What You’ll Need:

• Camera (Phone is fine)
• Pen and small notebook or pieces of paper

Rules:

• 1 Hour Time Limit
  • First group to get all items on list will meet the scavenger hunt leader in a central place in the zoo. After an hour, every group should meet at the central place, regardless of if they got everything on the list or not.
• Each picture must include at least one group member to ensure it is not another teams’ or from the Internet!

List:

1. Take a picture of three animals from the movie The Lion King
2. Take a picture of an animal that normally sleeps at night.
3. Take a picture of an animal who is an omnivore.
4. Have a stranger pose like a monkey. Take a picture with him/her!
5. Take a picture of zookeeper cleaning/feeding animals.
6. Take a picture of an animal who originates from Australia.
7. Take a picture with an animal from a petting zoo
8. Take a picture of an animal who originates from Africa.
9. Take a picture of an animal who originates from Asia.
10. Have a stranger draw you a picture of a giraffe.
    1. Must take a picture of the person drawing the image!
11. Take a picture of an animal sitting in or climbing a tree.
12. Take a picture of your group posing with someone who doesn’t know you’re there
13. Take a picture of an animal that enjoys swimming more than staying on land.
14. Find an animal who lives longer than humans usually do.
15. Get a whole family to pose like fish. Take a picture with them.
16. Take a picture of an animal who is the size of your hand or smaller

After the Hunt is Over:

The first group to get everything on the list wins! If one hour passes and no one got everything on the list, the group with the most completed items will win.

Town Exploration Teen Scavenger Hunt

This teenager scavenger hunt can be a lot of fun! This will be done easiest with cars for each group, but may be done without one if the town has a lot of stores in a single area!

What you’ll need:

• Large bag to hold requested objects
• Camera (phone is fine)

Rules:

• 2 hour time limit
• No stealing objects from other teams/the public

List:

• Take a picture of a stranger serenading a member of your group
• Get a free company pen (with the company’s info on it)
• Find a buy one get one free coupon from a local store
• Take a picture of your entire team inside a shopping cart (picture taken by chaperone)
  • Can use up to three carts depending on the cart. Max of 4 people in each cart
• Take a picture with a police officer
• Take a picture of an out of state car license
• Take a picture of a bus station
• Take a picture in front of a display window of a retail store
• Get a travel brochure
• Get a local store’s shopping bag (plastic or paper)
• Take a picture with someone 60 or older
• Collect a restaurant take out menu
• Collect a receipt from a food store
• Find a job application
• Find 2 business cards

After the hunt:

The first group to get everything on the list wins! If two hours passes and no one got everything on the list, the group with the most completed items will win.

Teen Video Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt is super fun! This one is based off of a point system as well. You don’t need much space to do it, so it’s good if you need the teens to stay in a single location.

What you’ll need:

• Phone/Camera with video recording capabilities

Rules:

• One hour time limit
• Each category will have a certain amount of points allotted to it. To win, your team must have the most points.
• The chaperone can record any videos that team members cannot do themselves.

List:

Mandatory Category: Must have these to qualify.

• Creative introduction video. Must include all members.
• One team member reciting 4 Shakespeare lines

1 Point Videos

• One team member singing their favorite song in public
  • 10s minimum
• Woman/Man scolding their child
• Someone walking their dog
• Someone walking in a work uniform
• Whole team singing “Let it Go” from Frozen

3 point Videos

• Whole team acting out an earthquake publicly
  • Extra point if earthquake looks real on video
• Fit your entire team in a bathtub (clothed, of course)
• Do a good deed for someone
• Pretend to take a nap somewhere extremely public
• High five a police officer
• Walk a strangers dog

5 Point Videos

• Walk up to a drive-thru window and order something
• Dance with a stranger and get them to dance with you
• Have the whole team serenade people at a restaurant or just to a friendly couple in general
• Get something out of the trash in view of a stranger then try to sell that object to them
  • Extra 3 points if they actually buy it!

After the hunt:

When an hour passes, all members must meet in a central predetermined location. Team with the most accumulated points wins!