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Description

Head outdoors and explore the beautiful biodiversity on offer. What will you discover?

Resources

Pens or pencils
A4 paper
Scavenger hunt sheets
Spotter sheets and/or devices with nature ID apps
Magnifying glasses and binoculars (optional)
A map or plan of a local green space (optional)

Instructions

Get together
Everyone should gather at the agreed place.
An adult should explain any specific safety arrangements for the activity.
For example, does the place you’re using have any hazards people need to be aware of? Are there boundaries on how far people can go? Where will the grown ups be?
The person leading the activity should explain that there are lots of different forms of life waiting to be discovered. People might not spot them immediately, but they’re all around them.
Everyone should stay where they are and close or cover their eyes to help them focus on using their other senses. What can they hear? What can they smell?
It may sound obvious, but make sure you’re in a safe area and that there’s someone keeping an eye on what’s going on around you.
Everyone should agree some ground rules for the activity, to make sure their visit doesn’t harm or damage the environment.
You’ll probably want to include things like being calm and quiet (so you don’t disturb wildlife), not picking any flowers or plants, handling wildlife gently, and putting things back where they were found.
Be prepared
Everyone should split into pairs or small groups.
The person leading the activity should give everyone a scavenger hunt sheets and a pencil or pen. They should explain that the challenge is to find everything on the list. Everyone should write or draw what they find and try to identify exactly what it is.
If it’s something that’s no longer part of a living thing (for example, a fallen leaf) and people can pick it up safely, they could keep hold of it to show everyone at the end.
The person leading the activity should show everyone any resources that they can use to help them identify the wonderful wildlife they’ll discover.
This could be the spotter sheets or apps mentioned above, or something else.
The person leading the activity should remind everyone about the boundaries for the hunt, including how far everyone’s allowed to explore and how long they’ve got.
If people have got a way of keeping track of the time, you might want to set a specific time for everyone to gather back.
Time to explore
Everyone should set off for their scavenger hunt.
At the end, everyone should gather together. Once everyone’s washed their hands, everyone should take it in turns to share their discoveries. What was everyone’s favourite find? Did they learn something new?
The person leading the activity should remind everyone that biodiversity’s all about the variety of living things, on a local and global scale. They could remind everyone that WWF talk about biodiversity as ‘the magic ingredient that enables the world to work smoothly’.
You could remind everyone about Web of life – or give it a go if you haven’t tried it yet.
Everyone should talk about why biodiversity is important. What can people do to support biodiversity? Does anyone know about any species that are struggling and need help? Bees are a good example.

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