Organising a Christmas scavenger hunt is a great festive game to play with family and friends. Of course, with social distancing and lots of online meetups and virtual hangouts on video calls such as Facetime and Zoom, the scavenger hunt needs to go online as well.
We have been doing loads of Christmas quizzes over the last few weeks, so this week I decided to format the family Zoom fun in a different way. I mixed a few different types of question rounds along with a scavenger hunt round. It was so much fun and a nice challenge to get everyone running around the house trying to find objects on their indoor scavenger hunt.
Yes, we do test a lot of the activities we share here on Christmasphere!
When hosting your own Christmas scavenger hunt game you can either have that as the sole activity and expand on the suggested list below. Or you could do the same as we did and add it as an extra round to your quiz or family games night.
What is an online Christmas scavenger hunt?
Simply, an online Christmas scavenger hunt is where a host will set some prompts or clues and in a set amount of time, all of the participants have to rush around their house to gather as many of the objects as they can to earn points. The person with the most points wins.
The prompts can be as easy as a list of actual named items (e.g. candy cane, ornament, cookie) or it can be a clue or prompt that challenges the participants to think first about how to interpret and find an item that meets that requirement (e.g. find something shiny, find something you heat, find something related to the movie Elf). See below for our list of prompts or make up your own!
How to organise an online Christmas scavenger hunt
As the host or quizmaster, you will simply need a list of prompts/clues for items you want the participants to find plus a timer. We recommend keeping the time short enough that it is a challenge to find all of the items around the house. We think 5 minutes for about 10 items is a good challenge. Go shorter on time if you want the virtual Christmas scavenger hunt to be even more challenging. We assign different levels of points for each prompt to reflect how challenging it is and to keep it interesting.
If you have children involved it’s nice to give them a bit more time for their hunt. It’s also a good way for them to earn more points if this is part of a wider quiz and they are contending with adults.
We had the prompts on a PDF (which we will share below) which we opened up on a screen share on Zoom so everyone read for themselves what they need to find. The host sets the timer, we used one on our phone, and periodically called out the remaining time whilst the zoom call continued and the participants were searching.
In the end, each participant has to present what they found for each prompt and the host decides if it meets it enough to be awarded the points.
Rules of the online scavenger hunt
- Participants have a set amount of time (e.g. 5 minutes) to gather items from around their house to meet each of the prompts.
- The list of prompts is displayed on the shared screen option for all to see.
- Each item must meet the scavenger hunt prompt, the host will have the final say.
- Everyone must be back at their screens/computers when the timer runs out. They have 10 seconds once the host announces times up to return to the zoom call. For every 10 seconds after that, they have 1 point deducted.
Christmas scavenger hunt ideas and clues
We have a range of 10 different prompts for the Christmas scavenger hunt reflecting various difficulty levels in terms of interpreting the prompt and chances of finding it around the house. Next to each prompt, we assign a number of points to reflect the difficult level.
The list we made below is aimed at a family with older children and teens. Do adapt it as you like to make it more challenging for just a group of adults, or make it simpler for younger children.
For young children use simple prompts or literal object suggestions.
Christmas Scavenger Hunt
You have 5 minutes to find any of the following:
- Something you wear on your head (1 point)
- Something made of wood (1 point)
- Something sweet (1 point)
- Something red (2 points)
- Something snowy (2 points)
- Something that jingles (3 points)
- Something with stars on (3 points)
- Something to do with the nativity story (3 points)
- Something to do with Elf (the movie) (3 points)
- Something to do with The Nutcracker (ballet) (5 points)
Download and print the Christmas Scavenger Hunt printable
You can download this version of the Christmas Scavenger Hunt printable to use with your family, friends, and colleagues.
- Either use the PDF digitally to read off or share the screen on your video call.
- Or you can print it off to share when we are back to in-person physical scavenger hunts.
- To get your copy of the Christmas Scavenger Hunt you will need to simply fill in your details below, confirm your email, then you will get the link and password to the secret resource library where you can download your copy.
Happy hunting!
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