Photo Scavenger Hunt

I'm not sure how many of you remember my anger and bitterness over the fact that my team "Pink Lightning" lost our first ever Bishop family scavenger hunt back in March.  You can read more about that here.  I explained how we found out about a photo scavenger hunt and how our first one went.  I thought I would just direct you to that, instead of forcing you to sit through an almost identical post!  I posted about today's adventure on Facebook and some of my friends were asking for details so I thought I would go ahead and share that here.  I will say that the first scavenger hunt was such a big hit with all of us that we have been eager for spring break next year just so that we can have another one!

Today, when faced with the chance to go to the Morgan County Fair (and subsequent thoughts of the crowds and cost), we decided quite spontaneously to take the kids to Nashville, IN for another hunt.  My nieces Kayla and Jacey have been enjoying time with their cousins and so we decided we would introduce them to this wonderful experience too.  We piled in the van and off we went, armed with a new list and two digital cameras.  We divided into teams before we left.  The kids have basically split into two groups (by age) and so we decided it would be best to stick with those.  I had Kayla, Katherine and Kaleb on my team and Kris took Jacey, Livvy and Abbey.  He definitely had the harder job, trying to trudge through crowds and little shops with a 4, 6 and 7 year old!  My team came up with the name "The Four Musketeers" while the younger ones chose "Basket Flowers" due to a love for basketball and flowers.  Here are the teams:

The Four Musketeers

Basket Flowers

Before I explain what we did, I'll just say that we had SO MUCH FUN!  What great memories for all of us!  I'm so glad that we got to include Kayla and Jacey in it too.  I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for an activity to do with the family.  It inspires creativity and helps your kids work as a team.  You don't have to split into teams though--especially if you only have one or two kids.

Some of you may remember voting on our pictures.  My husband developed the Facebook Scavenger Hunt app and did a great job if I might add!  It's simple, but was very helpful.  We posted our pictures, along with a caption for each one, and people voted on which picture best represented the item we were tasked with finding.  The best representation.  And we had a LOT of people vote.  Hopefully we'll have even more this time around.  The pictures and their respective captions will be posted side by side, and you will click which one you think is best.  Then you will move on to the next pair of pictures.  We enlisted our friends and family on Facebook to vote and ended up with almost 2000 VOTES in March!!  We will be doing that again, so stay tuned for your opportunity to take part in judging today's scavenger hunt photos.  We were only going to have 15 items this time around (as opposed to 25), but Katherine talked me into 5 more.  So we wound up with 20 pictures each (team, not individual!) and all in all, it was just a great day.

If you would like to do this with you own family, it is really simple and quite cheap, if you have a digital camera.  If you don't have a digital camera, you can just do a regular hunt, without pictures.  You just need a list (which you can find online, or you can use my suggestions below or make up your own) and a place to hunt.  My kids aren't shy at all either about going up to complete strangers and asking to take their picture and people have always just been such good sports and willing to play along.  I cannot emphasize enough how firmly I believe that everyone with kids should do this!

The first list you will see is what we hunted for today.  The second list is what we used back in March.  I'll let you know when voting for today's scavenger hunt will begin.  Keep in mind that some of the items in the list are open to interpretation.  For instance, "blade".  It could be a blade of grass, the blade from a fan or a knife.  Each team chooses what they think is the most creative picture of a "blade" and then our voters decide which team had the best picture/idea.  Also, I'd just like to throw this out there-IF you do this and want to use the Facebook app to have your friends and family vote, my husband can make it available to you for your own use!  How cool is that?!?

List #1

1.  Flowers
2.  Bird
3.  A large family (cannot be related to you)
4.  A long beard
5.  Something cute
6.  A guy with black hair
7.  Unique book title
8.  Something scary
9.  Something funny
10.  Cross
11.  Blade
12.  Something unusual
13.  Orange car
14.  Funny sign
15.  Ring
16.  Something yellow
17.  A Christian shirt
18.  Small house
19.  Something old
20.  Something new

List #2

1.  Something that represents your team name
2.  "Bishop" - obviously you don't have to use this-we chose this due to our name
3.  Coin older than 1980
4.  A blade
5.  A horse
6.  Someone with a long beard/mustache
7.  Tall building
8.  Y-shaped twig
9.  Piece of jewelry
10.  Animal
11.  Flag
12.  A feather
13.  Moss
14.  Water running in a creek/river (we knew we'd be near water)
15.  Unusual shaped leaf
16.  Something soft
17.  Something white
18.  Old Shoe
19.  Something that floats
20.  Something funny
21.  Something unusual
22.  Something more than 200 years old
23.  Glasses
24.  Hotel
25.  Noise maker