Scavenger Hunt Generator
Pick a pack, pick a length, and get a list you can tick off on a phone or print out. Nothing to buy, nothing to set up.
Pick where you are hunting
How many things to find
Choose a pack and make your list.
What is in each pack
- HalloweenTrick-or-treat streets and parties
- ChristmasIndoors, town centres and the front room
- OutdoorsParks, woods and long walks
- Road tripLong drives, from the back seat
- Rainy day indoorsOne house, nobody going outside
- ClassroomFirst week, and wet break
How to run one that actually works
A scavenger hunt is one of the few group activities that needs no equipment, no skill and no explaining, which is why it survives being run by a tired adult on a wet Saturday. It also fails in a small number of predictable ways, and all of them are avoidable if you know about them before you start rather than fifteen minutes in.
The items have to be findable, not clever.This is the whole difference between a good list and a bad one. “Something beautiful” sounds charming and produces an argument; “a red car” is over in ten seconds. What works is a thing you either have or have not got, which takes about a minute of looking. Every item here is written to that standard, and where one is deliberately open-ended it is phrased so that any honest answer counts.
Name the judge before the first item, not after. Somebody will find something that arguably counts, and if there is no agreed adjudicator that becomes a negotiation between children, which is not a game. Whoever holds the list decides, and saying so out loud at the start costs four seconds and prevents the single most common way a hunt turns sour.
Set a time limit rather than a finish line. A race to complete the list means the team that falls behind stops trying, and stops well before the end. A deadline keeps everybody playing until the whistle, because finding two more things is still worth doing when you are losing. Twenty minutes is right for most groups, and the list length should be chosen to be slightly out of reach in that time.
Print one per person if you can. A group of four sharing one phone spends the hunt walking at the pace of whoever is holding it, which is a walk rather than a hunt. Paper also removes the argument about who gets to tick things off, and it works in places where a phone signal does not.
Do not photograph everything. Requiring a photo of each find sounds like proof and works like a brake: it turns a two-minute stretch of looking into a two-minute stretch of framing a shot, and the youngest child is always the slowest at it. Trust the tick. If you genuinely need proof, ask for photos of three items rather than all fifteen.
Where each pack fits
The Halloween and Christmas packs are built for moving around — a trick-or-treat street and a town centre respectively — so they lean on things you spot rather than things you collect. Both work as a way of giving children something to do during the walking part of an evening that is otherwise all waiting.
Outdoors is the one to use with mixed ages, because the items scale with the finder: an adult and a five-year-old can both answer “something growing out of a wall” and get different satisfying answers. It also survives being run in a car park if the walk you planned falls through.
Road trip is the only pack designed to be played sitting still, which changes the items completely — everything is spotted through a window, so nothing can require picking up, and the list has to tolerate the fact that you cannot go back for a missed one. Indoors is its wet-afternoon equivalent, and it is the pack most likely to turn into a conversation, because half the items are about objects with a history.
Classroom is written for the first week of term rather than for a party. Several items are about other people rather than objects, which makes it an icebreaker wearing a scavenger hunt’s clothes: a child who would not introduce themselves to a stranger will happily ask three of them whether their birthday is in the same month.
Common questions
- How do you make a scavenger hunt list?
- Choose a pack, choose how many things to find, and press the button. The list is drawn fresh each time, so two teams can be given different lists, or the same one if you want a race. Nothing is saved and nobody needs an account.
- Can I print the scavenger hunt?
- Yes — the Print button produces a clean sheet with just the list and the tickboxes, without the page furniture or the background. Printing one per child is the usual way to run it, since a group sharing a single phone stops being a hunt fairly quickly.
- How many things should be on the list?
- Ten is a walk round a park and twenty-five is an afternoon. Fifteen is the default because the most common group is children, and a list nobody finishes is the most common way a hunt fizzles out. It is better to run a short list twice than a long one once.
- What age is a scavenger hunt good for?
- Roughly four upwards, with the pack doing the work rather than the length. Younger children need items they can spot without reading closely, which is what the outdoors and Halloween packs are; the indoor and classroom packs suit older ones because several items need a bit of thinking.
- Do you need photos or an app to play?
- No, and that is deliberate. Photo submissions mean somebody has to host and moderate other people's pictures, and it is not what most people want anyway — a checklist that works on paper, on a phone or on a shared screen is the whole thing.
- How do you settle an argument about whether something counts?
- Decide before you start that whoever is holding the list is the judge and their ruling is final. The items are written so any honest answer counts, but a hunt with two children and no named adjudicator will find the one ambiguous line within about four minutes.
- Can two teams race the same list?
- Yes, and it is the best version for a party. Generate one list, print a copy each, and set a time limit rather than racing to finish — a deadline means both teams are still playing at the end, where a race means one team stops caring the moment they fall behind.