Scavenger Hunts- A language-enriching activity!

Meghan O'Grady
Dec 3
2 min read

Scavenger hunts are fun and they're a great way to enhance a child's speech and language skills. Whether you’re indoors on a rainy day or exploring your neighborhood, scavenger hunts naturally encourage communication, problem-solving, and social interactions.

What makes Scavenger Hunts Language-Enriching

1. They are a natural, play-based way to meaningful support language development

During a scavenger hunt, kids are exposed to new words, descriptive language (e.g., colors, textures), category words (e.g., find all the animals), language to compare (e.g., bigger than), quantify (e.g., all of or two), and verbs (e.g., "find or "show").

2. As a child's language develops, the language used can become more complex

What starts as "Find something blue" when playing with a 3 year old, can build to "Find something that is the same color as your shirt" or "Find something that is cold." You can easily adjust the complexity based on your child’s language skills.

3. They strengthen problem-solving and critical thinking

Scavenger hunts require kids to think about categories, functions, and features. As the language used becomes more complex, the cognitive load increases. A child needs to organize information and make connections, working on word retrieval, comprehension, and expressive language all at the same time.

4. They promote social communication

Scavenger hunts with peers can be an opportunity to work on turn-taking, sharing, negotiating roles and responsibilities, and collaboration. Even with a caregiver, the back-and-forth interaction is rich and meaningful.

Adapting scavenger hunts:

The way the information is presented can be the most impactful way to adapt a scavenger hunt for kids of varying ages. For older kids or those with strong language skills, verbally sharing the information may work (e.g., "Find something round"). For children who can read, a written lists of the items to find may work. To scaffold this activity and reduce the cognitive load, including visuals of the items to find is very helpful. Visuals support executive functioning skills, as they help with processing and retaining information. The scavenger hunt we've created for you today is all visual-based. Use the link below to download your copy today!