Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt with free printable
A Christmas lights scavenger hunt is a fun activity for the whole family — or even the whole neighborhood. Find out how you can plan one simply and download the free printable Christmas lights scavenger hunt game page below!
It’s Christmastime. Christmas crafting is in full swing at my house, we’re ready to settle in with some G-rated Christmas movies, a fun game of Christmas charades, and the lights have gone up all around our town. I don’t know about your kids, but mine get so excited seeing what all the neighbors do for Christmas light displays. We love to drive around after dark looking at all the lit-up houses. This year I thought we might have some extra fun and turn our drive into a Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt.
Prepare ahead of time for the best scavenger hunt experience
Now I know some of you are more like me and prefer to take a relaxed approach to activities without a lot of prep time ahead. However, it never hurts to prepare if you prefer that approach. You can ask in your local Facebook groups or NextDoor app for suggestions and find out the best neighborhoods for lights. You can also scope out your own neighborhood on the way home from work one evening and figure out how many of the items on your scavenger hunt list you can find. It’s not cheating, it’s preparing so the kids aren’t disappointed. You can also check this list of the best Christmas light displays state-by-state.
Here are three ways to host your own Christmas lights scavenger hunt
You can use the printable below and give each person a scavenger hunt paper to fill out or you can work together as a family. Since the printable uses pictures, everyone can participate! As you see each item on the scavenger hunt printable, color it in or X it out to keep track. If you need to keep the evening short, work together, and once you’ve found at least one match for each item on the list it’s time to head home. If you want to turn it into a silly, friendly competition, you can do that too.
The Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt also works well for groups. Each car gets its own copy, and you can either text the moderator when you complete it with a picture as evidence, show up back at a central location to compare or figure out a different way to name the winner. You can even have a socially distant celebration with friends or extended family across the U.S. Just set a time for all of you to start in your home town and make it clear how to claim the win. You could organize a massive facetime group, use Facebook Messenger, or another favorite like the Marco Polo App.
Over the summer I noticed several families on our block working together to create little scavenger hunts for daily walks to help keep the kids connected and avoid boredom. Why not use this Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt as a way to organize the neighborhood into a giant scavenger hunt for everyone on the block? Have each family put a printed image matching one of the squares in the front window or laminate it and put it somewhere in the yard. They can use any printable image they find online that matches a square on the scavenger hunt. Then as you walk or drive in the neighborhood you can enjoy the hunt. Or you can set a specific date and time to “host” a socially distant neighborhood scavenger hunt all at the same time using the Marco Polo app. In a small town, you could even enlist local businesses to put up something from the list in their Christmas displays and link to this blog post to promote a town-wide scavenger hunt.
What to take along for your Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt
To make your Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt more durable, print it out and put it on card stock. If it might rain or snow, laminate the list and use a marker to check off each item as you find it. If you have different teams, use different colors of cardstock for each team. You will also need to have crayons or pencils and maybe some cheap clipboards with you. Adding hot chocolate in thermoses, (or chocolate milk in sippy cups), a munchy treat like popcorn in single-serve zip bags, and a container of Christmas cookies to pass out toward the end of the evening will take the Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt to a new level! I love these cute thermoses for the car and these cute bags are perfect for popcorn.
If you are turning the scavenger hunt into a competition, you could get a small prize for the first person to find each item. Something like this might be appropriate and could be saved from year to year. Since the printable is set up in rows, you could also have small prizes for completed rows, or keep your younger kids more engaged by giving out a single candy piece (M&Ms maybe?) for every square found.
You don’t have to get fancy with snacks and prizes to have a fun Christmas Lights Scavenger Hunt. Sometimes, keeping it simple is the most fun of all. Print out the printable last minute and head out for a spontaneous night of fun and laughter with your family. Make memories together without stress! That’s what I plan to do. Our kids will treasure these Christmas memories for a lifetime.
If you are looking for more ways to spice up your Christmas celebration, be sure to check out this huge list of Christmas Science experiments!
GET THE FREE PRINTABLE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS SCAVENGER HUNT HERE:
Find tons more Christmas activities and crafts to try in the FREE printable Heart and Soul Holidays guide! You can get it directly to your inbox by clicking the image below:
Find more fun winter learning ideas from my friends here:
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Love the Christmas scavenger hunt idea! Thank you.
This is such a fun idea!
If I won I would use the $’s to help my son relocate. Thanks for the opportunity!