Do you enjoy looking for clues? Using your observational skills? Checking boxes from a list of the things you find along your journey? Well then, May 24 might be your new favorite day because it’s National Scavenger Hunt Day!

Scavenger hunts are a fun and active way to use your brain! They can be done in almost any location — all you need is a list of items to find! The list can include things like:

• Trees, flowers, a butterfly, an ant and a bird’s nest outside.
• Toys, the TV remote, and salt and pepper shakers inside the house.
• Or stop signs, license plates for different states, or vehicles of different colors from inside the car.

Where did such a fun game come from? Well actually, it can be traced back quite a way to old folk games, however, a gossip columnist named Elsa Maxwell is credited with making scavenger hunts popular again in the 1930s. She enjoyed throwing parties and is said to have introduced a variety of the games when she hosted them.

To celebrate this fun holiday, we are not only going to give you some books and movie suggestions, but also offer some super-exciting scavenger hunts for you to try! And since scavenger hunts can stir up the same unknown excitement as a mystery book, we have included some items from that genre as well.

You can find a few scavenger hunts here. One even includes a QR scan so you can digitally check off the boxes! You can read more from Parents Magazine via Flipster, our online magazine resource. Also, see our blog post for Earth Day, which includes a scavenger hunt to take outside and celebrate our wonderful planet!