The week before easter my sister wrote out of the blue that she is doing a spontaneous trip to Berlin and if I had time to see them. These are the perks of being a freelancer (without a heavy workload right now). I was having time and we decided to meet up on Wednesday for breakfast. My sister wanted to go visit a cousin who is currently battling cancer. She wanted to leave the kids with dad but I decided I prepare a little adventure if they feel like it we could go do that and give dad a bit of time to relaxe (he is still in the healing process of his surgery).
I came up with the following idea. A colorful excursion. What does it mean… you may ask? The idea was to go out into the neighbor hood hunting for specific things. Like a treasure hunt but not pre-planned or organized. I told them we each pick a thing we want to find. I said I want to find blue circles. After some discussion my nephew settled on finding K’s – his name starts with one. My niece decided to look for green weird thingies.
I had brought two address book inlays from old calendars as well as my old camera. We grabbed a measuring tape and headed off to our colorful excursion.
Each item was then measured, photographed and documented in the booklet for further reference.
Here are some of the K’s my nephew found.
His favorite was the K on the upper right as it was the hugest graffiti we could find.
Here are some of the weird green thingies my niece hunted down.
Her favorite was the upper left. We still don’t know what it is. Our guesses: a salad spinner, a lottery wheel or a hamster wheel.
And here are some of my blue circles.
My favorite is probably the bike wheel but the best find was probably the soda cap in the pavement creak.
We had a lot of fun doing this colorful excursion. We locked ourselves into a hidden court yard but managed to get out. We stopped for a lemonade at a little café and chatted with the owner. We stopped for some play at the playground (and the only sibling squabbles). And I was invited for an ice cream by my niece. When we got back about two hours later we were all happy but exhausted.
Have you ever done something like a color excursion? Do you have other fun games of exploring I could do with them? What would you have been hunting for? What is your favorite thing we found?
18 comments
What a great idea! So glad you shared with us.
You are welcome. Glad you enjoyed it.
what a wonderful idea!!
Thank you Daria. We had a blast and some fun memories were created.
This is such a great idea. Absolutely love it! My favourite find is probably the green man. What is that? This April I’m doing an ABC project while our on my walks, so looking for something starting with each letter. At the end I’ll do a neighbourhood A-Z post.
That green man is in front of a school making drivers aware of kids crossing the street.
Your ABC project sounds fun and I am sure you are going to find so many great things. Look forward to that post.
That is such a fun idea! (Is the green thing a way to store a water hose?)
I do a similar sort of thing with kids at museums where they might be bored. I give each kid a Bingo sheet ahead of time and they have to find things – these sheets are obviously tailored to the museum. It’s fun!
Museum bingo is such a great idea. Love it.
No it’s not for a water hose – what a good guess – but is was much smaller. More like a big big bowl
This is SUCH A GREAT IDEA! I love it and want to do something like this with my kids ASAP, now. Thanks for sharing. I also love the blue bottle cap – what a find (and reminder than even when we’re looking “down” we can see some cool stuff.)
Yes, go out with the kids and do this. And then please share your finds.
I agree looking up or down often holds so much treasure.
What a fun afternoon! I wish my nieces and nephews lived close enough to do this kind of thing. Well, they’re all to old probably now, high school and college, but this is a great idea, and the pictures are lovely.
We live in a townhouse complex with a parking lot, and some neighbors have a little green man they put out when the kids are playing, so people will be extra careful. It’s a great idea.
It was a fun afternoon. I am not sure I agree we are too old for this sort of exercise. It’s such a great wait to open your eyes to beauty and adventure around and I don’t think it’s limited to an age group. I personally downy wrote things down or measure it but I do the photos and look for certain things. Or maybe not even take the photos. When I walk around looking for specific plants or animals it’s also a sort of excursion just not something to physically show for. It’s just memories.
This is such an awesome idea Tobia! And how cool is that green bike please? We have not tried it yet but this sounds like something we would enjoy.
Sometimes we do Geocaching and the kids really like it. One time we found a tracker in Monterey California that was originally came from Germany. It’s basically a little token with a barcode you can place in the geocaches and log online. You can follow it along and track when it gets picked up again if you are not familiar with it. We took it back to Germany and are curious to see where it goes next.
I always wanted to do geocaching but never have. I think I even have a log in somewhere. Maybe I’ll give that a try and see what I can find around here. I know my niece and nephew had found some.
Hope you tracked will have a fun journey.
Oh, this is so much fun! I kinda want to just do this on my own now, haha. What a fun way to get the kids outside and doing something active, but also working their minds! Great idea!
I do this exercise all the time on my own when I do a photo walk. I usually only look for certain things like specific colors or shapes or flowers and such. Would love to hear what you found.
What a wonderful day with your niece and nephew and what a clever idea to keep them entertained! How old are they?
It was such a great afternoon with them. My niece is 11 and my nephew is thinking is 8 or 9.