Tag Archives: Scavenger Hunt

Wir fahren mit dem Zug!

Posted in Games, Taking German with You, Travel, Uncategorized by

I can’t believe the summer is almost upon us! We’ll be heading back to the Netherlands and Germany for a few weeks. I will certainly be posting about our travels!

This year, we’re doing something completely new! Well, at least new to the kids! We will be taking the train from the Netherlands to Germany! I am SO excited! I just love the train 🙂  We’ll leave from Amsterdam, change in Utrecht, and arrive in Frankfurt. I just can’t wait for the boys to experience train travel in Europe!

Of course, I have to come up with some activities to keep them occupied on the long train ride. As much as I love to look out the window, I don’t think they will be doing that for the entire trip!

I started looking around for some train ride scavenger hunts. There are tons of them out there for car rides, so I figured it should be easy, right? Wrong. I could only find one so far! And it was for a trip in the US going up to Maine (click here to check it out). So while it was inspiring, it won’t exactly work for us.

So I went back to my travel scavenger hunt that I made for the car and updated it with new images for the train ride!

 

As you can see, there are two sets of things to search for. And for each set, there are three versions:

  • one with words and images
  • one with just images
  • one with just words

Some of the new vocabulary include:

  • die Baustelle
  • die Kirche
  • die Fabrik
  • der Bahnhof
  • der Fluss
  • der Wolkenkratzer
  • der Kran
  • das Schloss
  • der Tunnel

Obviously, a lot of these things can also be seen from a car! So feel free to refresh your old version of this travel game, even if you are going on a road trip!

I am going to print out the copy with words and images, one for each of the boys, and put them in their travel binders to play a game of I Spy. They can mark off what they see with a square sticky note or a pencil or crayon. I’m trying to travel extra light this year! So I won’t bother to laminate them. If I want to use them again next year, I can either print out a fresh copy or laminate it then 🙂

I actually will print out a whole set to laminate, so we can start practicing vocabulary now. I’ll cut up the squares, so we can play games like Go Fish and Memory.

Download the PDF for FREE here: Travel Games on the Train GitA

Gute Reise!

Tiere in der Natur – Animals in Nature

Posted in Coloring Pages, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized, Word Posters by

Yesterday, I wrote about a nature scavenger hunt I’m preparing for the children in the pre-K/kindergarten class. I’m introducing the vocabulary, so they can go on the hunt at the class picnic and teach their parents the German words along the way!

The first part was about signs of nature. This second part is about “animals” in nature – well, animals and insects 🙂

We’re going to play a game of Simon sagt (Simon Says) to practice the words. I’ll teach the children a small motion to go with each word. Then we’ll all play at being the different animals and insects!

Here are the word posters:

And here is the coloring page:

Tiere in der Natur GitA-page-009

You can download the PDF for free here: Tiere in der Natur GitA

 

Zeichen des Frühlings – Signs of Spring

Posted in Coloring Pages, Pre-K & K Class, Uncategorized, Word Posters by

The weather has finally warmed up here on the east coast! And the end of the school year is fast approaching. The pre-K/kindergarten class picnic is coming up next week. I volunteered to lead a scavenger hunt for the kiddos. Luckily, I already have something in my bag of tricks 😉

One of my go-to resources for creating my materials is a site called Teachers Pay Teachers. It’s where I get most of my clipart. But sometimes I get ready-made materials, too. A couple years ago, Froggy came home with a super cute Nature Walk scavenger hunt. I tracked down the seller and asked her if she could make it for me in German. She generously did! Unfortunately, I can’t find it on her TPT page, but I’ve asked her if she would post it, so I can share it here. Here’s a link to the English version.

In the meantime, I’ve created word posters and coloring pages to go along with the items on the scavenger hunt. I grouped them into two parts: Zeichen des Frühlings (Signs of Spring) and Tiere in der Natur (Animals in Nature).

Here’s what the first set looks like:

And here is the coloring page:

Zeichen des Frühlings GitA-page-010

You can download the PDF for free here: Zeichen des Frühlings GitA

You could use the coloring page(s) as a scavenger hunt for now!

I’ll be teaching the words to the children in our next two classes. Then they can help their parents with the German when we’re all at the picnic!

UPDATE (29 May 2018):  I found a spelling mistake in the files for the flower. I have since made the correction, both in the above example, and in the PDF file!

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt auf Deutsch

Posted in Games, Travel, Uncategorized by

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Today was the day! We drove 5.5 hours south, from the Netherlands into Germany. So what did we do to keep the kiddos occupied? Well, they actually slept quite a lot! A month abroad has taken it out of them! They did a busy bag or two. (There were some new little puzzles I’d found at the Hema in the NL – it’s kind of like Target, only smaller.) And we also did a road trip scavenger hunt 🙂

Last year, I posted a set of travel games for road trips in Germany and the Netherlands. It looks, in part, like this:

There are also sets with just pictures and just words (so you can play games such as memory or go fish), plus a search for just vehicles (3rd image here).

Froggy had a great time with the scavenger hunt last year and managed to cover all of his boxes!

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This year we were driving from the Netherlands to Germany again, so I packed them up once more. But I also found a new scavenger hunt. This one has 52 things to find. And it’s all in German!! It also is only words with no pictures. That meant the boys needed help with the hunt. Heck, I had to look up a few words for myself before we left!

As we drove down the highway toward Baden-Württemberg, we found a whole bunch of things, right off the bat. And then Froggy got tired and lost interest. I think PER and I ended up having the most fun with it 🙂  I still have 9 items that I never found. But as we got closer and closer to our destination, I was SO excited to check off just one or two more things: ein rotes Cabrio!!! ein Mini-Cooper!! I still say I saw a green Jeep, but as it wasn’t an actual Jeep brand, I wasn’t allowed to cross it off my list 🙂  You can see all my scribblings on the scavenger hunt:

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You can download your own copy over on Isi-im-Glück. Herzlichen Dank, Isi!

UPDATE (29 May 2018): I have made a new version of my Road Trip Scavenger Hunt! This one is adjusted more to traveling by train, but it could work well from the car, too! Check out THIS POST to get the new FREE download!

A Trip to the Philadelphia Zoo

Posted in Games, Language Themes, Taking German with You, Uncategorized, Word Posters by

Last summer, we finally took the boys to the Philadelphia Zoo. Of course, I had to work in a German lesson!

So I made up word posters for 16 of the animals that can be found there. Hopefully your local zoo has similar animals! There are three sets of cards:

  • pictures with words
  • just pictures
  • just words.

You can print them in full 8½ x11 or print more to a page for smaller versions. I like to print 6-to-a-page, laminate them, and cut them down to 3×4 cards. Then we use them to play memory, go fish, or other games! If you’ll be using them for memory, be sure to print on thick card stock or paper with a patterned back! The animals included are:

  • der Bär – bear
  • der Eisbär – polar bear
  • das Erdmännchen – meerkat
  • die Gazelle – gazelle
  • die Giraffe – giraffe
  • der Gorilla – gorilla
  • das Känguru – kangaroo
  • der Lemur – lemur
  • der Leopard – leopard
  • der Löwe – lion
  • das Nashorn – rhinoceros
  • das Nilpferd – hippopotamus
  • der Orang-Utan – orangutan
  • der Penguin – penguin
  • der Tiger – tiger
  • das Zebra – zebra

Here’s a sample of what they look like:

Download all the posters as a PDF here: Zootiere Posters Phila Zoo GitA

On the day of our outing to the zoo, I gave the boys a scavenger hunt. It looks like this:

Auf der Suche im Zoo GitA-page-002

Included in this PDF document is a worksheet to keep track of the animal name, the color of the animal, and its climate. Download it here: Auf der Suche im Zoo GitA

Viel Spaß im Zoo!

Scavenger Hunt at Longwood Gardens

Posted in Taking German with You, Uncategorized by

We are back from our travels and finally settling back into our regular routine. I have a number of things to post … once I finish cleaning them up 🙂

For now, I have a scavenger hunt. It is specific to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, PA.

But it was easy to make. The last time we were at the gardens, I took close-up pictures of about 25 things in the indoor Children’s Garden located in the Conservatory. Then I picked out 12 of them and made up a sheet with the images and the words in German.

Hippo (age 3 /12) needed some guidance to find everything, but he did it! And it was a fun way to spend our morning. We of course got distracted, chasing the leaping water up and down along the wall. And he explored the many other water features. (I often bring a change of clothes, just in case!) We also got to sit in the little red chairs to read a book that one of the volunteers lent to us.

 

If you happen to be in southeastern PA or want a daytrip from Philadelphia, Longwood Gardens is a beautiful destination. The property is so vast with so many different things to see! And there are a number of fun things for the children to find, such as the indoor and outdoor children’s gardens and several huge treehouses!

To download the scavenger hunt, click here: Longwood Gardens Suche im Kinder-Garten (PDF)

Some of the images on the scavenger hunt:

And here we are on the hunt:

Save

Travel Games for Germany and the Netherlands

Posted in Games, Travel, Uncategorized by

We’ll be heading back to the Netherlands and Germany this summer. We fly in and out of Frankfurt and then have about a 5-hour drive to and from the Netherlands. So in addition to packing things to keep the kiddos busy on the airplane, I have a separate stash of things to keep them busy in the car.

I just finished creating a set of cards that can be used in a variety of ways. You can play Memory, I Spy, Go Fish. Or laminate an entire sheet and mark off the things you see with a dry erase marker (did you know they make washable ones?!) or a small post-it. There are two pages of various items – one for each of the boys (that way there is no competition over who sees what first!). And there is also a one-page set of just vehicles. At the end, there is an additional sheet to help count up a few of the things you might see on a long drive.

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Items included are:

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The vehicles page includes: das Flugzeug, der Bus, der LKW, das Fahrrad, ein gelbes Auto, der Bagger, der Traktor, der Kipper, das Motorrad, der Hubschrauber, das Feuerwehrauto, & der Zug.

I’d love to hear how you use the cards!!

UPDATE- August 2016:

Froggy really enjoyed the game of looking for items on his page. Hippo lost interest after finding just a few. We went with the option of covering the found items with post-its (the 1 7/8″squares worked perfectly):

2016-07-21 16.47.19

UPDATE – July 2017:

We will be taking the scavenger hunt with us again this year! But I also found another, longer hunt – with only German words! – at another blogger’s site. Check out THIS POST for more info!

UPDATE – May 2018: 

I have made a new version of my Road Trip Scavenger Hunt! This one is adjusted more to traveling by train, but it could work well from the car, too! Check out THIS POST to get the new FREE download!