Fun

Scavenger Hunts

by Theresa Ferrari, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

Getting outside is good for your health! If you’re looking for some fun this summer, how about doing a scavenger hunt. A scavenger hunt is a game that starts with a prepared list of specific objects for participants to gather or locate. Scavenger hunts are more than just a way to keep busy, they are a way to build critical thinking skills and have fun at the same time. Scavenger hunts with players working in groups has the added benefit of fostering social connections and teamwork. They lend themselves to a variety of situations for many reasons.

  • They don’t require many supplies, which makes them affordable and easy to implement.
  • They can be as simple or elaborate as you want.
  • They can be played as individuals or with teams.
  • They can be customized to a variety of age groups.
  • They are adaptable to small or large groups.
  • They can be played in various ways.

Adults or teens can plan the scavenger hunt or turn the task over to younger children to create it (given some parameters and guidance). For example, camp counselors could plan a scavenger hunt for a Cloverbud day camp.

To create a scavenger hunt, you’ll need to decide on the elements such as the type and theme. Make sure to define if anything is off limits. Then follow these basic steps.

  1. Make a list of items for participants to find or things to do. A Google search will also turn up printable scavenger hunt sheets, such as this one.
  2. Define the search area (backyard, neighborhood, park, etc.)
  3. Decide on a time limit for completion.
  4. Decide how you will complete the game: Is it finding the most items? Or is the goal for everyone to find the items and share what they found? Are you going to do something with the items once your find them?

Scavenger Hunt Ideas

group of children

Scavenger hunts are a great way for kids of all ages to have fun and be active

  • Items that are a particular color or shape
  • Items that involve the senses: something smooth, something soft, 3 things you can hear, etc.
  • Items to correspond to letters of the alphabet
  • Items in nature: leaf, flower, feather, rock, twig, acorn, pine cone, bird’s nest, animal tracks, etc.
  • Items in a neighborhood: traffic light, street sign, mailbox, flag, fire hydrant, fence, etc.
  • Local landmarks or points of interest in the community (park, water, building)
  • Players doing certain activities (making a silly face, climbing on a rock, standing on one foot, etc.)

Mix and match to add some challenge: a red door, a blue flower, a white car.

Scavenger Hunt Variations

  • In a photo scavenger hunt, instead of collecting objects, players take a photo of the items they find, the places they have to locate, or the activity they have to perform. It would require participants to have a camera or smartphone to complete.
  • A virtual scavenger hunt is a great way to connect with friends and family in different locations. The hunt occurs in various locations, but the items you search for are the same. Participants complete the scavenger hunt and then connect with other players over a video conferencing platform.
  • Being outside is a way to get in some physical activity. Being out in nature has other positive benefits. Direct exposure to nature and the outdoors has been found to have a restorative and calming effect. It shifts focus and provides an escape. Check out this site for some ideas for a nature scavenger hunt.
  • If fitness is your focus, direct participants to go to various locations and add in a physical activity to do at each location: 10 jumping jacks, walking lunges, push ups, etc.
  • There’s an app for that! Scavenger hunts have gone digital! You can create one using the Goosechase. This free app lets you create and organize your own scavenger hunt, or you can use the bank of 100+ tested games.

Whatever format you decide on, have fun doing it! Happy hunting!

References

Beighle, A., &  Darst, P. W. (2004). Fitness scavenger hunts for middle school students. Strategies, 17(6), 13–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2004.11000369

Gruno, J., & Gribbons, S. L. (2020). Incorporating nature-based physical activity in physical and health education. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 91(3), 26–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/07303084.2019.1705210

Keep Calm and Puzzle On

Puzzles have been around for a long time. But who knew that January 29 is National Puzzle Day! And why not have a day devoted to puzzles – they’re fun. And because they involve focus and concentration, they also serve as stress relievers, which may explain their increased popularity during the pandemic. Even Bill Gates is said to be a fan.

Let’s puzzle on and focus on two favorites of mine: word puzzles and jigsaw puzzles.

Word Puzzles

To say that I like words would be an understatement. I remember doing all sorts of vocabulary builders in elementary school, and I would read books past my bedtime with a flashlight under the covers. Even now I subscribe to Merriam Webster’s Word of the Day. In 5th grade I placed second in a spelling bee and in a fire prevention essay contest. I didn’t really discover I was a good writer until I was in graduate school the second time around. So maybe there’s a theme there….hmmm.

Probably the most well-known type of word puzzle is the crossword puzzle. I found out that Arthur Wynn, a journalist from Liverpool, is credited as being the inventor of the first crossword puzzle, which was published in the New York World newspaper in 1913. Other word puzzles appeared more recently. Mad Libs was created in the 1950s. Word searches appeared in the U.S. in 1968, and now there are many variations.

Jigsaw Puzzles

The precursor to the modern-day jigsaw puzzle dates back to the 1760s in England. Called “dissections,” they were maps mounted on wood and cut apart, as a way to teach children geography. It’s interesting to note that researchers recently completed the first study of the process children use to do jigsaw puzzles. The study revealed that 3-year-olds use trial and error to put them together, but 4-year-olds are able to use information in the picture to complete the puzzle, indicating changes in how their brains process information.

Puzzles and Health – Besides being fun, puzzles have several other health-related benefits.

Intellectual Health: Puzzles demand a level of thought and focus. Spending time regularly working on puzzles improves memory and problem-solving skills. It’s great when fun and learning can be combined!

Studies have found that when we work on a jigsaw puzzle, we use both sides of our brain. Your left brain is logical and works in a linear fashion; it sees all the separate pieces and attempts to sort them out logically. You find the corners and all the straight-edge puzzle pieces first, right? Your right brain is the creative side – it sees the “big picture” and works intuitively. As you study the image and its details, your brain taps into visual-spatial patterns. I would argue the same is true for word puzzles. Although they may not appear so on the surface, word puzzles are about patterns, too – words, after all, are letters arranged in a meaningful way. In exercising both sides of the brain at the same time, we create connections between both sides, as well as connections between individual brain cells. These connections increase our ability to learn, to comprehend, and to remember.

Social Health: Puzzles also offer social benefits. When we work together with someone on a task, we strengthen our social connections. Those interactions keep us socially active, which is important for our mental health. Because jigsaw puzzles are pictures, they can bridge language barriers.

Mental Health: As we connect two puzzle pieces together (you know that feeling!), our brains release dopamine, which has a positive effect on our mood. When you concentrate while sorting pieces by color and shape or you scan back and forth to find the words in a word search, you tune out other distractions, so puzzling helps us keep calm. There’s something to be said for actually touching jigsaw puzzle pieces and using paper and pencil to complete a crossword. It also gives us a break from screen time.

What’s the deal with screen time? Screen time could be the topic of an entire post, but I’ll summarize here. Research has shown an association between time spent using screen media and psychological well-being.  For example, in one study, high users of screens were significantly more likely to display poor emotion regulation (not staying calm, arguing too much, being difficult to get along with), an inability to finish tasks, lower curiosity, and more difficulty making friends. Researchers have yet to establish a causal relationship – it’s a ‘chicken and egg’ thing: Which came first? Did screen use lead to these things, or were people with those characteristics more likely to use screens? And does the type of screen use matter? What else might be involved? We won’t solve that puzzle today, but suffice it to say that too much screen use and certain types of it might be problematic.

Screens and COVID – With remote schooling and socializing, screen time has likely increased during the coronavirus pandemic. It seems like a contradiction: We should connect to people (even if virtually), and yet we are cautioned against spending too much time on screens. Keep up those connections, but it’s still recommended that we take a break from screens when we can.

Today’s Take-Away: I hope that learning about the health benefits didn’t take the fun out of puzzles for you, but instead it gives you an appreciation of how fun, health, and learning are connected.

a page with letters and words

Mental Health Month Word Search

As we are getting close to the end of January and wrapping up our Ohio 4-H Mental Health Month, I created a word search (using the search generator below), using words that have appeared in our posts this month. You can download it here.

Of course, you can take advantage of existing puzzles and word games. You can take it a step further by creating your own. Creating word puzzles used to be a time-consuming task…until the internet arrived. Now there are countless programs and online tools that help you create your own puzzles in no time. These are just a few:

Snow is predicted this weekend; time to keep calm and puzzle on and have a little fun in honor of National Puzzle Day!

Yours in Health,

Signature

 

Theresa Ferrari, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

Take a Virtual Museum Tour

Today’s post for “Social Sunday” on the Ohio 4-H Facebook page encourages you to tour a museum virtually with friends and gives several suggestions of museums to visit. I thought this topic fit well with Friday’s post about planning an imaginary road trip. In the case of a virtual tour, you can take the trip, it’s just virtual. Whether you tour with friends or by yourself, it’s a great way to have fun and learn at the same time.

Virtual tours can consist of a collection of videos, still images, 3D walk-throughs, and written descriptions that help you feel as though you’re visiting the museum. Although it will not be everything in the museum’s collection, you will still get to see some amazing things.

The Google Arts & Culture site is a gold mine of virtual museum tours. This online platform will connect you with over 2,000 museums from 80 countries. Art, culture, history, and science will be at your fingertips. I think you will be amazed at the diversity of offerings. You can sort them alphabetically and also view a map that shows geographic locations. I found at least 15 that I had already visited., but you could visit a different one every day for a year and still have more to see!

Some of these museums are close to us in Ohio – the Toledo Art Museum, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont. Others are worlds away – from Australia to Uzbekistan and everywhere in between. I found several that I know I will go back to visit virtually – including the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, and the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto. So many others piqued my curiosity – whether it was the topic or the location: the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Art Museum of Estonia; and the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum, just to name a few. I’m looking forward to more exploration, and like the imaginary road trip, maybe someday I will get to visit more of these museums in person.

Virtual museum tours are a way to exercise your creative wellness, one of many wellness dimensions. Creative wellness has been called the missing link in boosting well-being. Research shows that engagement with artistic activities, either as an observer or a creator, can enhance a person’s mood and thus they play a role in reducing stress. Taking time to appreciate others’ creative efforts help us to appreciate the world around us, connect with others, and may inspire our own creative spirit. Expressing your emotions and views through the arts can be a great way to practice self-care and to cultivate social connections.

Today’s Take-Away: Visit the Google Arts & Culture website, find a least one museum that interests you, and invite a friend or family member to take a virtual tour with you.

Visit the Ohio 4-H Mental Health Month page for more resources, and come back here for more information and ideas.

Yours in Health,

Signature

Theresa Ferrari, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

Take an Imaginary Road Trip!

I love to travel. However, because of the pandemic I had to change most of last year’s travel plans, and I’ll be deferring future travel until it’s safe to do so. Although I can’t wait to get on the road again, there’s nothing to stop us from taking an imaginary road trip in the meantime!

When I got the idea about taking an imaginary road trip, the first thing that popped up in my Google search was Jason Reynolds, who is the seventh National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. First of all, who knew there was such a thing, and how cool is that. Second, it turns out Mr. Reynolds proposes the idea of just such a trip! In one of his “Write. Right. Rite.” videos, he puts forth the imaginary road trip challenge:

  • Pick a person you admire – why did you select this person to go on the trip with you?
  • Describe the best of the trip with this person.
  • Describe what the worst part of the trip would be with this person.

I decided to add a few elements of my own to this challenge:

  • What is your destination?
  • What is one thing that you want to be sure to pack?
  • What vehicle are you driving? Or maybe you’re taking another form of transportation.
  • What will you stop and see along the way?
  • What music will you listen to? Create your own playlist.
  • What are other details of your trip?

We can use the image of a winding road for the ups and downs that COVID has taken us through in the past year. It’s easy to feel disappointed when we can’t do the things we had hoped to do, that COVID kept us from doing. Instead, I’m choosing to reframe this time as an opportunity to think about where I want to go, to plan an imaginary road trip so I can take a real one when the time is right to do so.

Today’s Take-Away: Planning an imaginary road trip can be fun! To help you plan out your trip, I put all of this into an Imaginary Road Trip activity sheet for you to use. Take your creativity one step further and draw or search for images to illustrate your trip. Get your friends or family members in on the act and compare your trips. You’ll be cultivating social connections in the process.

One song that would be on my road trip playlist is Sheryl Crow’s Every Day is a Winding Road. With every passing day, I believe we’ll get “a little bit closer to feeling fine.” And who knows, we might actually make our imaginary trips a reality!

Check out our Ohio 4-H Mental Health Month resources and come back here for more information and ideas.

Yours in Health,

Signature

Theresa Ferrari, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development

 

Laughter and Self-Care: Laughter is the Best Medicine

 Laughter is like a windshield wiper. It doesn’t stop the rain, but it allows us to keep going.

I don’t know about you, but we’re only two weeks into 2021, and it’s already been a bit overwhelming. When we feel stressed, it’s time to indulge in some self-care strategies. Today I’m going to explore how laughter can help us combine fun and self-care.

Although we often use the words “laughter” and “humor” interchangeably, they have different definitions. Humor refers to the stimulus, such as a joke; laughter is the response. It’s a physical response: there are distinct sounds and certain facial expressions that accompany laughter. I’ll bet you can hear the difference between a giggle and guffaw, chuckle and chortle, shriek and snicker, roar and howl. And have you ever laughed so hard you cried or got out of breath? (I have!) Sometimes your entire body gets involved: think of the expression ROFL used in text messages – rolling on the floor laughing.

Speaking of sayings, have you heard the saying, “Laughter is the best medicine”? It turns out, there is some truth to this saying. Laughter makes us feel better. It can elevate our mood, perhaps because it decreases stress hormones. The act of laughing can release tension in your body, and it has been used to help people manage pain.

If you think that cognitive neuroscience and laughter don’t go together, then you need to watch this TED Talk. Cognitive neuroscientist Sophie Scott shares some surprising facts about laughter, and yes, it’s pretty funny too.

Among some of the interesting information that Dr. Scott shared:

  • Animals laugh too.
  • Laughter is social. You’re 30 times more likely to laugh if you’re with somebody else than if you’re alone.
  • Your brain can distinguish whether laughter is “involuntary” or “posed.” So, you could say that laughter is all in your head.

Why does laughter work? Laughter in general may help us to feel good, and shared laughter can strengthen our relationships. It shows we’re on the same wavelength. Laughing together makes us feel closer and gives us something to share with friends. Humor can add to the shared experiences that are the foundation of relationships (“Remember that time when….”). Thus, laughter can help us build social connections, which contribute to our overall health.

In public speaking, using humor is one of the recommendations, in short, because humor works. Humor is useful in public speaking because it helps you connect with your audience. It can keep the audience’s attention and make your presentation more memorable. The use of humor should be appropriate and in good taste – If you question whether it’s appropriate, then it probably isn’t. Use the grandmother test: Is is a joke you’d feel comfortable telling your grandmother? It’s okay to poke fun at yourself (called self-deprecating humor). As noted in the business newsletter Inc., “laughing at your imperfections allows you to recognize them, accept them, and then move along,” and thus it can work to your advantage in building relationships. But you should not use humor to mock someone or laugh at someone’s expense. And unless you are a stand-up comedian, it is better to go with the less-is-more approach and use just a few well-placed jokes.

Here are some suggestions for injecting more laughter into your life.

  • Watch a comedy show or an old TV sitcom or read a funny book.
  • Play with a pet, they do some pretty funny things.
  • Spend time with people who make you laugh.
  • Play a game like charades, Pictionary, or Apples to Apples.
  • Write song parodies (change the words to popular songs).
  • Tack up jokes, funny sayings, or memes in your desk area.
  • Look up some jokes on the internet. Write each one on a slip of paper and put them all in a jar. When you need a mood boost, pull out a slip and read the joke.

Reading about laughter and looking up jokes on the internet has certainly put me in a better mood. I had so much fun looking up jokes that I almost forgot I was writing this post! Here are a few that made me chuckle:

  • What gets more wet the more it dries? A towel.
  • Why can’t your nose be 12 inches long? Because then it would be a foot.
  • Why couldn’t the pony sing a lullaby? Because she was a little horse.
  • Why did the math book look so sad? Because it had so many problems.

Today’s Take-Away: Find some ways to add laughter into your life and spread it to those around you. See our previous post on Mad-Libs that you can use at one of your 4-H Club meetings. Then maybe you can try making up one of your own.

Yours in Health,

Signature

Theresa Ferrari, Extension Specialist, 4-H Youth Development