Secret Sentence Scavenger Hunt

This scavenger hunt started with a really simple question; “Mom do you want to play with me?” I followed my 6-year-old up to our Maker Space with the intention of us gluing glitter onto something, but when I saw the post-it notes I suggested “How about a scavenger hunt?” She was game. We have done all kinds of scavenger hunts before like colors, puzzles, and even sight words, but I wanted this one to not only challenge her to find the post-it notes but also to create a sentence. Here is now I made our secret sentence scavenger hunt!

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Gather your materials. You will need some post-it notes and a marker. That’s it. My kind of activity.

While I set the activity up, my daughter was swinging on our Gorilla Gym upstairs. Swinging is the perfect wind-down after school.

Write out a sentence on the post-it notes, one word per note. Do not forget to use a capital letter and period to signal that those notes are the first and last in your message. Make sure to count how many notes you use.

 

Hide them.

I didn’t really hide them so much as scatter them around, so she had to look for them, but nothing was truly hidden. I wanted the bulk of her energy used creating the sentence not finding the notes. Make sure you share how many notes you have hidden, so your child knows when to stop looking and start building that secret message.

She was far too fast with my first message, so I made the next two much longer!

We played until dinner time.

This one asked her if she wanted to bake an apple pie with me this weekend. Check out the not so apple pie we made; I shared a picture on Instagram. This was such a great after-school activity; there was movement, reading, sentence building, and even some math as she figured out how many notes she had, how many I had told her there were in total and the difference. All she cared about was how much fun she was having with me.

If you like this literacy idea, you will love the 75 tips and tricks I share in Raising A Rock-Star Reader. In the book, my co-author and I break down the building blocks for reading into easy tips and activities all parents can fit into their busy schedules. Buy it on Amazon today!