My first treasure hunt

These activities are suitable for children aged 21-30 months and align with stage 4 of the Developmental Journal Babies Visual Impairment (DJVI).

Safety first

What you'll need

• A tray or basket and everyday household items such as a hairbrush, cutlery, sponges, cups, wooden spoons, soft toys, musical toys, bells.
• Clean outdoor items such as leaves.
• Pictures of larger outside objects could also be used for an outdoor treasure hunt. For examples, images of a post box, yellow flowers, fence, street signs, bus stops, lamp post, or garden toys.

Tips

• Your child may love to have a treasure hunt with you. These can be done within the home, outdoors in your garden, or when on a walk. It’s a great way for your child to be active within their environments and provides further opportunities for you to explore together.
• Playing these types of games with your child may encourage them to use any of their available vision to actively scan their environment, as well as encourage them to use their hands when searching for items. Providing your child with opportunities to touch and explore items can aid their understanding of concepts (for example, colours and size).
• You can also include prepositions such as ‘in/on/under/in front/behind’ in the clues to support the development of these concepts. 
• If your child has limited mobility, ensure they’re seated in the best position to be able to focus and engage.
• Give your child increased time to process the information. 

Activity

• Find matching textures. You could get two sets of matching materials and either hide one of the sets within the room or place them on the tray. Place the other set into a bag, encourage your child to reach into the bag to select a material and then match it to one on the lap tray or find it hidden in the room.
• In your treasure hunt, you can add items that make a noise (for example, a ball with a bell in it), something that has a nice smell or items of different textures, so that your child uses all their senses.
• Use your senses treasure hunt: encourage your child to use all of their senses within the clues. For example, find something that makes a noise, find something that smells nice, find something that is rough, find something you can eat, find something you can smell.
• Begin the game within a defined space such as the living room or a lap tray so that your child has a small area to scan and search.
• Your child can also be encouraged to find items with their hands when searching.
• Instead of writing the clues you could take a photo of the hidden item in the environment and help your child find it, or you can give your child the object and ask them to find another the same, or similar.
• You can also provide the clues to a treasure hunt in a format such as, “what am I..?”, "You find me in the garden, I can be found under your feet, I am green, I am soft…What am I?" Answer “I am grass”.