Brain Quest Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger Hunt

When most people think of board games they usually think of table-top games which require mostly fine motor skills or mostly upper extremity use. But I have found many board games that include a gross motor component that moves the whole body, and Brain Quest's Scavenger Hunt is one of those games.

To be honest, a scavenger hunt does not require a board game to be fun. Just make a list of things to find and go out looking. The first person or team to return with everything on the list wins the game. It's pretty straight-forward. Well, I guess that can depend on what's on the list! A scavenger hunt can be confined to one room, held at a park looking for nature items, or conducted in a neighborhood where people go door to door asking for items. You could have a scavenger hunt in your office, at church or in your classroom. At this time, when many families are confined to their homes (COVID), it could be a fun game to play with the whole family. The hunt location and items collected are limited only by your imagination.

Brain Quest's Scavenger Hunt incorporates a game board so there is a little more to it than just collecting things. The board measures 20" x 20" and has a 31 space path, from start to YOU WIN.   

Game board

The game includes six pawns for players to use to move along the path, a 2-minute timer, a spinner and 100 cards. Each card has something different on each side, so 200 items total on 100 cards. Each card will name one item or one category of things to find. Each card has a colored border around it, four colors in all, and the different color borders are played on different rounds. More about that below. Here are examples of items to find on the cards:

• Something that smells really bad
  
• Towel that is not white
  
• Shoe that is too big for you
• Anything that begins with the letter A
• Something made of plastic
• Vegetable
• Something shiny
• Food that comes in a bag
• Picture of a family

The spinner has four sections that will instruct you to move ahead 1 space, 2 spaces, 3 spaces, or move another player ahead 1 space. 

Below are the instructions for playing this game, but if you are stuck at home and want to play a sit-down version, try this:

Use a pile of old magazines and make a list of say 10 things to find. Tear out pictures that fall into the categories. See who can be the first to find eight of the 10 items. Use the pictures and move right into a craft project like making a collage with your pictures, gluing them onto a sheet of paper. Incorporate scissors and glue, or just tear around the edges of the pictures and glue them down. Add glitter, stickers, sequins, macaroni, beans, whatever you can find around the house, to get really fancy. Lots of hand skills can be incorporated into an activity like this.

Object:
The first player to the YOU WIN space on the board wins the game.

Set up:
Place the board on the table. Each player chooses a pawn and places it next to GO on the game board. Separate cards into stacks by border colors. Place six cards with blue borders on the spaces on the game board. Players look over the cards showing what they will need to find.

Play:
Turn over the 2-minute timer and everyone starts searching. Find as many of the six items as you can before the 2-minutes are up. When time is up, everyone returns to the board with their items. Each item you find only counts as one item. If you find a basketball, it cannot count as something round AND something orange. One person reads one card at a time, and as each card is read all players that found something in that category move ahead one space on the board.

Play three more rounds, using a cards with a different border color for each round. Play until someone moves into the YOU WIN space and wins the game. 

Try this:

• Skip the board, just use the cards.
• Skip the game, just look at the cards with categories and think of things that you see that would fall into that category.
• Lay ground rules before you start, such as you can't go into personal spaces like other's bedrooms, purses or backpacks.
• Go through the cards and take out any that don't apply. Or, if there is not something that applies in the house, such as a bath toy, be open about what can be collected. For instance something that could be USED as a bath toy could apply.

If you are interested in purchasing this game or just want more information, click on the image below.