Winter Bazaar: Halloween Scavenger Hunt

I try to get my kids outside everyday, weather permitting, so for this week's Winter Bazaar, we put a little spin on our usual walk. We usually walk along the water, but this time, we ventured into parts of the neighborhood we don't normally go to. To keep my son involved in the walk, we did a Halloween Scavenger Hunt. I came up with a list of easily recognizable Halloween/Fall items and we looked for them on our walk. Older kids could help make the list, but since my son doesn't have a good grasp on exactly what Halloween is, I made the list.

I wrote the list on a plain piece of white paper, stuck a Halloween sticker on the top, and off we went. Here are some pictures.

Pumpkins. Strangely enough, this was the hardest item on the list to find! I'm not sure if it's a little early for pumpkins to be out, or if people don't put them out, because they tend to walk off, but we looked for close to an hour before we found these fake pumpkins on a porch.

Since we also needed ingredients for dinner, we ended up at Safeway, the only place we found real pumpkins. Perhaps that's cheating, but in my book, they count.


This is actually right outside my front door, but Johnny pointed to the sign and flowers and said, "That's on the list!" So we took a picture.

Fall leaves. Also fake, but still pretty. What's funniest to me about this picture is that we were on a Halloween scavenger hunt, but it was 80-something degrees outside, hence the shorts and sandals. Someone forgot to tell Mother Nature that it's supposed to be fall in our part of the country.

Spider webs!

We were looking for a black cat, but this is the closest we got. If you look closely, you can see a large, disgruntled looking orange cat in the window.

I had some more general items on my list, so this was our "something orange."


Our list also included things like ghosts, witches, etc, and we were able to find most of them. We were outside for a couple of hours and Johnny was good and tired when we got back (me too).

The best thing about this activity is that you can personalize it for the ages of your kids and your area, and it gets you outside and moving. You could offer prizes for the most items found, and end the hunt with punch and cookies.

Get more ideas at Scribbit's Winter Bazaar!