Find resources / Activities / Treasure Hunts Activity

Why do it? / He aha e mahi ai?

So tamariki can:

• Enjoy the anticipation of searching and finding ‘treasure’
• Use both their problem solving and motor skills in one activity
• Have fun either indoors or outside in the fresh air
• Enrich their language through describing and comparing items in their collection

• Observe and talk about maths ideas like same, different, more, less, small, big, longer and shorter.

How to do it / Te tikanga mō tēnei mahi:

• Ask your tamaiti what sort of treasures they would like to hunt for and have a few different containers to put them in
• Vary where you hunt. Outdoors is great – garden, street, park, moana, awa, ngāhere
• Suggest a focus for the treasure hunt. It might be general like treasures from the beach or be more specific like different shells
• Tamariki may be able to identify small groups inside a bigger group, another maths idea. For example, ‘In our collection of shells, can we sort all the big shells, middle sized shells and the little shells.’
• They could also look for specific characteristics such as colour, size or shape –‘Let’s hunt for round things’ or ‘Let’s see how many black shells we can find.’
• Ask open questions to help your tamaiti notice details –‘You’ve found a lot of leaves. These ones look like a family. What leaf families can you see? ‘

• If you’ve collected any living things, put them back where they were living when you’re done.

Other ideas / Ētahi atu whakaaro:

• Display collections so you can keep looking at them and talking about them – a shoe box lid works well
• Make collage pictures with treasures that can be glued or taped to cardboard
• Make a simple book about the treasures. Give it a title – ‘Treasures from te moana’. Your tamaiti can draw the pictures and whānau could write a short sentence about each picture
• Read the book together and more kōrero will happen as you relive the experience.