Photo Memory Scavenger Hunt for Kids to Enjoy Every Year

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This super simple memory scavenger hunt gets your kids moving. Even better, it leads to talking about what happened during the past year!

My kids and I love looking through old pictures. But they don’t always have the patience to sit and look through an entire photo album.

I came up with a brand new way to relive our family’s memories that is even better than just sitting and looking through books of pictures.

This memory activity gets the kids moving, but also makes them think about the pictures and gets them talking about the memories way more than just looking through an album.

Best of all, it’s super easy!

(If you love to take pictures of your kids (but aren’t always happy with the way they turn out) check out these three tips to improve your picture-taking skills!)

photo memory scavenger hunt for kids to enjoy every year

For a memory scavenger hunt, here’s what you will need:

printer & printer paper (or send to a photo printer)
pictures of your child

If you don’t have a printer at home, you can just send the pictures to your favorite photo printing store ahead of time!

We usually do this memory photo scavenger hunt as a New Years activity, but it can be done anytime of the year! It would be especially fun to do on your child’s birthday! Or even after a vacation to take a trip down memory lane!

First, you’ll need to find a few pictures from the past year and print them off. I like to find one from each month.

For younger kids, make the month they were taken in easy to identify (think holidays, pictures where you can easily tell which season it is, vacations, or major life events).

With older kids, you can make the pictures a little harder to identify. For my kids, I like to do a couple of easy ones, a few hard ones and then a few that could go in multiple months to really make them think about the order of events in our life.

(You could also do this with adults or older family members during a New Year’s Eve or birthday party, just make sure all your guests can be participants in the scavenger hunt and help identify some of the memories included.)

Get a full week of fun active things to do indoors!

The Memory Scavenger Hunt

Then, hide the pictures around the house and send the children searching!

memory scavenger hunt with photos from the year

When they have found all of the pictures, spread the pictures on a table or the floor.

after the hunt, put the photo memories in order that they happened

After the Scavenger Hunt, Put Memories in Order

Have the child try to put the pictures in chronological order.

Do you best to let them just work it out for a few minutes. It will spark conversation about the memories.

putting photo memories in chronological order

If they get stuck, talk about the details of the memory in the picture. You can quiz them a little bit to jog their memory.

Give Your Child Clues to the Photo Memories

Can they look at what they were wearing as a clue to what time of the year it was?

Where was the photo of the memory taken?

What do they remember about that time?

talking about memories from the year with this memory scavenger hunt

When they have their final guess as to the order of the picture, let them know how many they got correct. Then, they can guess again.

Of course, if they get frustrated by not getting it correct, help them out!

Save your photos for the next time you need an activity. You can use them to make a fun snow globe!

And when you take pics of what’s going on in your life, make a mental note of which ones to use in your next memory scavenger hunt! Grab your camera! That selfie might come in handy!