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Christmas Scavenger Hunt: Clues & Activities
Christmas is such a magical time of year filled with festive family fun. Here is a fun new idea to add to your Christmas activities: a Christmas Scavenger Hunt!
This is a scavenger hunt unlike any other! Each clue in the hunt leads you to locations throughout the house and includes super fun Christmas-themed games and challenges to complete together as a family before moving on to the next clue! It is the perfect activity to add some fun holiday memories this season and, as usual, we have it all ready for you in an easy printable download!
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This fun and festive Christmas Scavenger Hunt will have your family following clues throughout your home in search of clue bags that contain a unique game or challenge. Once the clue bag is found, families work together to accomplish the task before moving on to the next clue. Sound fun?
All these festive designs for the clues and activities were created by the oh-so-very talented designer — Joanna. She has a site, Cutify Creative, that allows you to see more of her work and even request personalized designs for your next project!
Setting Up Your Christmas Scavenger Hunt
Step 1: Add These Bag Covers
Begin by adding these colorful bag covers to a total of five lunch bags. These white lunch bags looked perfect with the design, but if you already have the traditional brown lunch bags – those will totally work too!
You can print the bag covers onto cardstock and adhere them to the front of the bag, or you could print the design directly onto the lunch bags straight from your printer!
Step 2: Fill Each Bag With One Activity
Next, fill each bag with one of the five included activities. You will want to include any of the printables and/or supplies needed for that game. These are the fun activities that the family will complete before moving on to the next clue.
Necessary Scavenger Hunt Activities & Supplies
This particular Christmas Scavenger Hunt includes five Christmas-related activities. The activities and the supplies needed to place in the bag include:
- Name that Tune (Ba-HUM-Bug) – Hum classic Christmas tunes until your family can guess the name of the song.
- Printables: Christmas Song Cards
- Additional items needed: No Additional Items Needed
- Christmas Pictionary – Without using verbal clues or sounds, players take turns drawing classic Christmas items until the item is guessed.
- Printables: Pictionary Item Cards
- Additional items needed: Pen/Pencil and Paper OR White Board and Dry Erase MarkersÂ
- Who Am I? – Try to guess the holiday character whose name is taped to your back by asking each other yes or no questions!
- Printables: Christmas Character Cards
- Additional items needed: Tape
- The Night Before Christmas Mad Libs – Fill in the blanks with nouns, adjectives and more to create your own unique and wacky Christmas story!
- Printables: Mad Lib Story Template
- Additional items needed: Pen/Pencil
- Don’t Eat the Reindeer – A player eats M&M treats from a game board until the other players yell “Oh Deer!” before a particular M&M is eaten (more details about this game are included in the printable download).
- Printables: Oh Deer! Game Board
- Additional items needed: Christmas M&Ms or a similar treat
Step 3: Add Clues to Each Bag
Finally, add clues to the bottom of each bag. Take the five location clue cards and add one to the bottom of each bag. The only clue that will not be placed on a bag is the first note that explains the game and offers the first clue. It starts with: ‘Tis the season for some family fun! Just follow the clues ’til each task is done…
Scavenger Hunt FYI:
The clues are all written to send your family to places you would find in a typical home including:
- Toy Room/Area
- Fridge
- Fireplace (or wherever you hang your Christmas stockings)
- Bedroom
- Mailbox
- The Christmas Tree
Step 4: Place Bags In Various Locations Around the Home
Place all of the clue bags in the various locations around the home according to the clues. With the exception of the first clue (which explains the game) the order of the other clues does not matter.
I do think it would be fun in this particular hunt to have the final destination be the Christmas tree, but it is totally up to you!
Step 5: Place the Final Prize
Wherever your final destination is (the Christmas tree or other), place a special Christmas gift as the final prize. You can use the printable gift tag and poem to attach to the gift letting your family know that the greatest gift isn’t wrapped under the tree – it is family (aww!)
If you are doing this hunt Christmas morning, the hunt could lead you to begin the traditional opening of presents, or if you do this hunt on Christmas Eve, perhaps the final prize is a Christmas Eve Box filled with Christmas jammies, a Christmas movie or a holiday game to play together.
Step 6: Give Participants First Clue and Have fun!
When your family is ready to play, give them the first clue. When they find the clue bag, have them open the bag to reveal the activity. After completing the challenge, they can then peek at the bottom of the bag to read their next clue!
{Pssstt…. More of an Amazon Prime mom than a Pinterest mom? No worries! If you don’t want to take the time to put together our DIY version, you can also purchase a different take on a Christmas Scavenger Hunt using Amazon Prime!}
We love your comments
My family has made this scavenger hunt our family tradition for the past 6 years. The kids look forward to it each year — especially “Oh Deer!” Thank you for the resource!!
Oh we LOVE to hear that! Merry Christmas!!
Best Christmas scavenger hunt ever! We did this with our 3 high school and college-age daughters and they LOVED it! Thank you!
Oh we’re so glad that they loved it!
How cute & fun!! Thank you for sharing this idea!
You are welcome! This one is my favorite of all of the scavenger hunts – enjoy!
My family loves scavenger hunts, and we do one every Christmas. This will be so much fun!
We hope you enjoy it!
This is such a fun idea! I love scavenger hunts!
Enjoy!
I love this! What a fun activity! I love scavenger hunts, so this is perfect 🙂
I can’t download the Christmas scavenger hunt. Please help, I have tried the helps that you posted to the other reader.
I just sent you an email!
I can not get the Christmas scavenger hunt downloads to load up so that I can print. I would love to use this
I am sorry you have difficulties with the download. It seems to be working on my end. When you scroll down to the end of the post you should see a large pink bar that says, “Click to Download Our” and then “Christmas Scavenger Hunt”. You will want to click on the pink bar that says, “Click to Download Our” and it should open up in a new tab. If that still isn’t working try clearing your cache on your computer – that seems to eliminate lots of computer issues! Good luck!
Thank you! You made it really easy to follow and the templates were so colorful. The games were a lot of fun!
So happy you enjoyed this! Merry Christmas!
This was the best Scavenger Hunt EVER!!! Doing a scavenger hunt is part of our holiday tradition. But it is complicated finding something for our entire family to be a part of, as our kids ages range from 8-28. This was the BEST! We all had soo much fun together with the activities. The kids re-hid the clues and did the hunt several more times with other family members and friends! Thanks soo much!!!
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing this! We are thrilled that you have enjoyed it! Did you see that we have more of the same style scavenger hunt for the other holidays? They are all free and listed at the bottom of the post (with links!) – you should check them out! I bet your family would love it! Enjoy!
Hi, I’m wondering if there is a simple black and white version to download? We don’t have a color printer, but I’d love to do this with my husband and kids this year. Thanks!
You can totally print this in black and white! We don’t have a specific version in black and white, but you should have a printer setting that will adjust it to black and white. After downloading the files and choosing print, a dialogue box should appear. I have seen it two different ways. On mine there is a checkbox that says “black and white” I select that and done! Others I have seen have you select from a dropdown menu labeled “color”. If you choose “mono” it will print black and white.
I hope that works for you! You can probably get better information from a google search “How to print in black and white” followed by your specific printer brand.
I can seem to download the christmas scavenger hunt?
Hey Tiffany!
I am sorry you having trouble downloading this! I just tried it and it worked for me. Here are a few things you could try:
1. Make sure you are clicking on the pink “Click to Download Our” at the bottom of the post. That is the button that will open up a new page with the printables.
2. Maybe try a different browser? Sometimes that does the trick.
If you still can’t download – leave us another message and we will see what else we can do. Good luck!
Hello, I am a wife, mom, and middle school teacher. I love your ideas! I am going to play the Scavenger Hunt tonight with my adult children. I would love to use your idea and create a hunt for my students next year!. Merry Christmas!
Thank you for sharing! Your comment made my day! We are glad you loved it!
So cute as always Sarina! So adorable! Now to squeeze it in…
You’ve done it again, Sarina!! I can’t wait to try this one!!
I’m SOOOOOO IN LOVE WITH THIS, Sarina! I’m totally doing this for Jamie!