If you’re going on a long car journey with your children, keep them entertained with this road trip scavenger hunt for kids.
This scavenger hunt is different to most of our usual ideas as it’s an observational scavenger hunt, rather than one where your kids have to take photos or collect items.
How To Play
To play this on a road trip, you’ll need a list of items for your children to find while you’re driving along. There are then a couple of ways that this can be played:
- Bingo – The first player to find all the items on their list (or the most items by the end of the road trip) is the winner
- Fastest Spotter – Keep track of which child spotted each item on the list first. The one who ends up finding the most items first by the time the list’s completed (or by the end of the journey) is the winner
The first option works best if you’re travelling with just the one child, while the second option needs at least two children taking part.
Items
If you want to create your own list, it should contain some items that you’re very likely to spot, with others that are a little more obscure or less likely to find.
This helps ensure that the activity isn’t over too soon and means your kids will be too busy looking out the window to be fighting in the back seat!
To save you the hassle of putting together a list yourself though, we’ve produced a scavenger hunt list with 20 different items – you can find this below.
We’ve also produced a free downloadable version of the list – there’s a link to it beneath the list of 20 items. This can then be saved to your computer and printed off as many times as you need.
The downloadable list is split into two sections based on the two different game options listed above. You could therefore play the first option with your kids on the way there and the second option on the return journey.
Road Trip Scavenger Hunt List
- Field of yellow flowers
- Hawaii license plate
- Deer warning sign
- Police car / State trooper
- Railroad tracks
- Cows
- River
- Billboard advertising a hospital
- Traffic cone
- Armadillo
- Bales of hay
- Hitchhiker
- Motorcycle
- Broken down car
- Train
- Rental truck towing a car
- 3 or more bikes on a car rack
- Barn with a collapsed roof
- Tractor
- Crop-spraying plane
Printable road trip scavenger hunt list for kids
Prizes
If you want, you could offer a prize to the winner. This might be based on where you’re going to on the road trip. For example, if you’re visiting a zoo, the prize could be that they get to pick something from the zoo’s gift store.
Alternatively, you could allow the winning child to pick which fast food restaurant you stop off at for lunch.
If you liked this idea, check out our other scavenger hunt ideas for road trips.