Forest treasure hunt printable for kids

This forest treasure hunt printable for kids is a great way to make the most of your visit to the forest. Prefect for families, forest schools, and outdoor community groups.

Forest treasure hunt printable for kids

This forest treasure hunt encourages us to slow down and notice our surroundings.

Look up, look down

Look all around,

What treasures can you find in your forest? 

While it’s definitely fun to run and skip through the woods, it’s also good sometimes to go very slowly, with eyes wide open, noticing special details.

This forest treasure hunt invites you to look carefully for the plants and animals in your environment. Maybe you’ll see a squirrel, bird, snail, moth, spider or some animal tracks.

It prompts you to look up and down, and to notice the tiny things you might otherwise walk straight passed.

The printable encourages you to focus on the sounds and textures of the woodland too, looking for things that are quiet, loud, smooth, hard, rough, moving, scented, and smooth.

What a lovely invitation to slow down, pay careful attention, and notice nature’s treasures.

How to use this printable

Print the treasure hunt sheet (see below) and take it with you to the forest. 

You can laminate the printable if you wish to make it more durable, and then complete it using wipeable markers. This allows you to re-use one sheet time and time again with different groups of children.

You might like to attach your sheet to a clipboard, to give you a good writing surface. Or simply fold it up, pop it in your pocket, and take it out with you on a nature walk.

Each item on the treasure hunt has a checkbox next to it, so you can tick off all the treasures you  find.

You can run the treasure hunt as a group activity, in pairs/family groups, or give each child their own copy.

If you’re heading out for a whole day you might try and find all the items on the nature treasure hunt in one go, or you can keep your printable and add to it with your nature-finds each time you head out on shorter trips.

Try repeating the treasure hunt at different times of year to see how your environment changes with the seasons. Get my guide to learning with the seasons here. 

You might like to take photographs of your the items you see, or make sketches of them to go in your nature journal. See my ultimate guide to nature journalling here.