Forest Scavenger Hunt: Ideas, Tasks and Setup

A forest is a ready-made setting for a scavenger hunt: trails give you a route, and trees, stumps, cones and leaves give you materials. You need a phone with the oppatt.io app, a route you have walked once beforehand, and a few household items such as a small bag, a pencil and a piece of paper per group. Plan checkpoints at spots that are easy to recognise, because GPS is less precise under trees. Keep everyone on marked paths, avoid water edges and steep sections, and set a fixed end time so nobody is still walking when it gets dark. Check the weather the day before and adjust the tasks if the ground is wet.

At a glance

At a glance
Group size	4-15 children, in groups of 3-5
Duration	60-90 minutes
Age	5-12 years
Where	any forest or wooded park with marked trails
Preparation	45 minutes including a test walk

Tasks you can use right away

Tasks you can use right away
No.	Task	How it works
1	Leaf Collection	Players find five leaves, each from a different tree, without picking from living branches. They lay them side by side and photograph them for the app.
2	Tree Circumference	At a large tree, players hold hands around the trunk and count how many children are needed to close the circle. They enter the number as the answer.
3	Sound Map	Everyone stands still and silent for one minute. Players write down or say aloud every sound they hear, such as birds, wind, footsteps or a distant road, and count them.
4	Stick Letter	Players gather fallen sticks and spell the first letter of their team name on the ground. A photo confirms the task before they scatter the sticks again.
5	Pine Cone Toss	Mark a circle on the ground with a stick. Each player collects three cones and throws from five steps back; the team counts how many land inside.
6	Track Finder	On a muddy or sandy stretch, players look for animal prints, droppings or nibbled cones. They photograph what they find and guess which animal left it.
7	Colour Hunt	Players search for something in each of four given colours, such as red, yellow, white and brown, using only things already on the ground. They bring the items to the checkpoint.
8	Bark Rubbing	Each team holds a sheet of paper against a trunk and rubs it with the side of a pencil. Back at the finish, they match the rubbings to the trees they visited.

Turn this into your own hunt

Tips for the day

Walk the route once yourself and check that the GPS dot lands on each checkpoint; move any that drift into the undergrowth.

Put the most active task, like the pine cone toss, roughly halfway so children get a break from walking.

Give each team a small cloth bag for collected items and empty it back into the forest at the end.

Start no later than three hours before sunset in autumn and winter; forests get dark earlier than open ground.

Take a photo of the parking spot or trailhead sign before you set off so you can find the way back if the route loops.

Frequently asked questions

Usually yes, but accuracy drops under dense canopy to about 10-20 metres. Place your checkpoints at recognisable spots like a junction, a bench or a clearing so players can still find them if the dot is slightly off.

Stick to marked trails and make each checkpoint visible from the previous one or from the path. Give every group an adult or an older child with a charged phone and agree on one meeting point if anything goes wrong.

Choose tasks that don't require sitting or kneeling and tell everyone to wear boots. Avoid tasks near ditches or steep banks, and swap any paper-based task for one that works on the phone screen.

Keep it to a minimum and collect everything afterwards. Many forests are managed land where leaving items isn't allowed, so it's easier to let the app hold the tasks and use natural features as the hiding spots.

Aim for 1.5 to 2 kilometres with a task every 150-250 metres. Children aged 5-7 lose interest if they walk more than five minutes without something to do, so shorter gaps work better than a longer route.

Keep tasks on the path rather than in tall grass or undergrowth, and ask parents to have children wear long trousers. Remind everyone to check skin and hair once they get home.