Hobbies And Interests
Science Games
The natural world is rich with mysterious plants and animals, and even small patches of wildlife in city parks provide enough variety for a nature-based explorer game. For young explorers, a simple observe-and-collect game introduces children to the basic principles of exploring the natural world. A scavenger hunt sheet with native plants and animals provides a list of explorer treasures. Magnifying glasses, gloves and glass jars for collecting are the only tools explorers need. If you are creating a game for several children, point values for each item turn the game into a friendly competition.
Urban Adventures
Cities provide ideal landscapes for mapping and navigating, which are integral adventurer skills. An online or atlas map of your city provides a blueprint for creating a custom treasure map that highlights one main route. Instead of a single treasure at the end of the route, mark several important buildings, monuments or shops along the route. During an adventure, young explorers are responsible for reading the map, leading the way and identifying the mystery locations on the route. The maps could serve as a race between teams of explorers, or a visual scavenger hunt list that requires explorers to take pictures or retrieve items from each location.
Treasure Hunting
The promise of treasure is ample motivation for explorers young and old. Modern day treasure hunting adventures are available through geocaching and letterboxing. Geocaching involves receiving a set of global positioning system (GPS) coordinates. Explorers follow the coordinates to a hidden box with a small trinket inside. The explorer replaces the trinket with a new item and keeps the old trinket as a piece of treasure. Letterboxing doesn't use GPS coordinates or trinkets. Instead, written instructions lead explorers to hidden boxes that contain log books and rubber stamps. Explorers bring their own log books and rubber stamps to the box. The box's rubber stamp leaves a print in the explorer log book, and the explorer leaves an imprint of her rubber stamp in the box log book. Both types of treasure hunting have thousands of locations all over the world, in cities and rural areas alike.
Indoor Aventures
Even rainy days can turn into explorer days. Indoor explorer games challenge children to look at their everyday surroundings in a completely new way. If you have multiple children, assign them different rooms in the house and challenge each team to create shelters out of the objects in their rooms. A more high-energy option is an explorer relay race. Each team receives a list of adventurer items like a flashlight, batteries, bug spray and tweezers. One member at a time from each team must run through the house to find the item and then bring it back to her team before the next player can search for the next item. The first team with all of their items wins.