This was a fun look back at 2013 and the scavenger hunt is only the first half of the activity. Talking about the memories and putting them in chronological order is the other half. Keeping my kids moving during bad weather is never hard because they LOVE scavenger hunts. You don’t need a huge space to keep them moving you just need enough space to hide some photos it will amaze you how active they can be in a single room, of course you can spread this out as far as you want as well. If you want to take this outside grab some snack sized plastic bags and pop the pictures inside to make them weather proof.
Gather your materials. You will to print out pictures of your favorite 2013 memories. I used picmonkey.com to make a collage of my photos and printed them out. It took a few minutes and even with a printer running low on ink the quality was good enough for this activity. You will also need some construction paper, double stick tape , a marker, and scissors. For the hunt we used paper bags to hold the pictures after they found them but they aren’t a must. 
Start by cutting your photos and construction paper. I used two colors because I was going to have my daughter look for one color and my son look for the other to make it a little more fair despite their age difference but they told me that was silly and just made it each man for himself. I don’t think it was silly but agreed to let them help decide how to play. Cut the paper into squares slightly larger than the photos. 
Tape the photos on. Add the approximate date on the back. For my kids I just did month because we are working on teaching my preschooler the months of the year. For older kids you could add days and make it more of a challenge or skip the dates all together and just search for the memories. Do what works for you and what will be the best for your kids. 
Hide them. 
If you are so inclined you can grab paper bags and write a little something on them to hold the photos while hunting. 
Gather your search party and go!
After you have found them all go through them and talk about each memory.
Sort them chronologically. This really showed us which months were the most memorable – January when we went to Disneyland, March when we visited family in Texas, and June when family visited us. 
Ask your kids to pick their favorite memories and share why they are their favorites. I teared up when my son said being with his grandparents was one of his. I’m weepy like that. 
Here’s to a wonderful 2014 and to all our great memories of 2013. What was your favorite memory of 2013?
Sara says
So I never comment, but have been following this blog since your boy was about one year old. Just wanted to say thanks so much for all the ideas, and most recently this one. It was so fun for me to speed through a year of photos yesterday, choosing a bunch of fun ones, and the kids absolutely LOVED the hunt. When they found a card that was more of the other one’s ‘event’, they so kindly handed them over and worked so cooperatively to put things in order. Afterwards, my 6-year-old son said, “Mom! I have a great idea! We should save these pictures, and every year, you should do one of these hunts – but only with pictures of the year that was just over – and we can keep them all in a box and look at them every New Year’s Eve!” It was so much fun for all of us that I think we just might. 🙂 Happy New Year to you!
Allison McDonald says
Oh Sara thank you for letting me know it was such a hit at your house. Also thank you for being a part of NTFFC for so long!
Keitha says
This is such a fabulous idea! On New Year’s Day, we sat down and filled out a page of 2013 highlights and 2014 goals. My 7-yr-old had a little trouble remembering good things about 2013 that occurred more than three months ago. It would have been perfect to do this activity first. I will definitely make a memory scavenger hunt for an activity this week. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful ideas. Happy New Year to you and your family.
Yogamama says
Loved this post! We did it for New Years too – http://toddlefast.blogspot.com/2014/01/inspired-by-you-memory-hunt.html Ditto to Sarah, yours was the first blog I started following about two years ago with my little girl.
Allison McDonald says
Yay!!
Becky Nicholas says
I pulled up my Pinterest page to look over my saved New Year’s Eve ideas…and this was one of the very first saved ideas waay back when, and I just thought I’d pop by to let you know that I’ve been doing this with my kids since I read this post, at least 5 years now! It’s something our whole family looks forward to and it’s so therapeutic for me as a mom. Looking back over the year to pick out pictures lets me sigh a breath of relief that we A: Made it through another year (esp. 2020, can I get an amen?? haha) and B: Had SO many successful moments and happy memories. Sometimes it feels like…what’d I do this year, and when I look back at the pics, I’m almost exhausted at how much we DID accomplish! So thank you SO, so much!!