Color Outdoor Nature Scavenger Hunt for Preschoolers

Summer is such a colorful time of year! All the plants in bloom and beautiful weather makes it the perfect time to go exploring outdoors. It’s also a great time to work on colors and observation skills with your preschooler! This simple outdoor scavenger hunt for kids is a great way to help kids get excercise, get in nature, and learn preschool colors too. Use this nature scavenger hunt with toddler, preschool pre-k, and kindergarten age children.

Outdoor scavenger hunt for kids

Inspired by all the different sights to see just in our own backyard, the kids and I did a Nature Color Search. Toddlers and preschoolers will love this hands-on nature activity to get outside and explore while learning! It couldn’t be any easier and yet will provide your kids with tons of educational fun.

Nature Color Search for Preschoolers

To start your nature color search, you only need a few simple things. A piece of cardboard, clothespins, crayons, and the colorful outdoors! My preschooler also used a magnifying glass for fun, but it’s not necessary.

Take your cardboard and use the crayons to color sections of each color you want to search for. Right now there are lots of colors to find, but other times of the year will work better if the focus is on the colors common for that season.

Once the cardboard is all colored, set the kids loose in whatever area they are searching in! We looked around our backyard and then took a walk where we found the blue feather. Local parks can be great places to let them explore safely.

Learning Colors and Counting

You could even turn it into a color AND counting game! For example, autumn is more likely to have many reds, oranges, yellows, and browns. So instead of having to just find the different colors, challenge your preschooler to find three different nature items in orange. It’s an easy way to keep the activity going longer and bring some math lessons into it as well!

Nature scavenger hunt

As your toddler or preschooler finds different items, let them match everything up to the correct colors. Using the clothespins also makes for great fine motor skills work, but your toddler will likely need some help with that part. Once all the colors are found, your kids can even go back to find more of each color!

This fun and simple activity can be adapted to any time of the year and be done over and over again. It’s a great way to take the learning outside and encourage them to explore in nature. This is a favorite activity in our house and I bet it will be in yours, too! For a fun, educational extension idea, grab this Printable Nature Journal for Kids to take along with your hunt.