Christmas Scavenger Hunt: Clues, Hiding Spots and Ideas

A Christmas scavenger hunt comes in two shapes. One is a chain of clues, where each clue points to the hiding spot of the next and the last one leads to a gift. The other is a checklist of holiday decorations to spot, like a star, a wreath or a candy cane, and whoever ticks off the most wins.

Choose the format by the youngest player’s reading level. Children who can’t read yet need picture clues, early readers love short rhymes, and kids from about nine can crack a coded clue. Teenagers and adults usually want competition: teams, a clock and a winner.

Treat every time and head count in this table as a rough guide we worked out for planning. A big house or a slow reader changes both.

Hunt	Best ages	Players	Time	What you need
Christmas morning gift hunt	5–12	1–4	15–30 min	6–10 clue cards, one hidden gift
Picture-piece hunt	3–5	1–3	10–15 min	a coloring page cut into pieces
Decorations spotting list	4–10	any	15–20 min	the list below, a pencil each
Coded clue hunt	9–12	1–6	30–45 min	a code key, 6–8 coded clues
Party team hunt	6–12	6–16 in teams	20–30 min	a clue set per team in its own color
Word search hunt at the table	7 and up	any	1–10 min	a printed grid each
Christmas lights hunt	all ages	a family	30–60 min	a checklist, a flashlight

Christmas morning: a clue hunt that ends at the big gift

A clue hunt stretches one present into twenty minutes of anticipation and running between rooms. It suits one to four children from about five, and it’s especially useful for a gift that won’t fit in a stocking, like a bicycle, a dollhouse or a board game the whole family shares.

Prepare everything the night before, and work backward. Hide the gift first. Then write the clue that leads to the gift and tuck it in its spot, then the clue that leads to that spot, and so on. The last card you hide is the first card the child reads, so hand that one over at breakfast or put it in a stocking.

Write a small number in the corner of each card, and jot down the spot for each number on a sticky note you keep in your pocket. On Christmas morning, a clue that’s slipped behind a cushion will stall the whole hunt, and your list is the quickest way to find it.

Six to ten clues is enough for most kids. Fewer feels over in a minute, and past ten the younger ones lose concentration long before they reach the gift.

Christmas scavenger hunt clues for 18 hiding spots

These rhyming clues are ours to share, so copy them onto index cards exactly as written. Each one describes the spot where you hide the next card. Read them aloud for beginning readers, and let them guess the location.

Hide the next clue here	Clue to write on the card
Under the Christmas tree	I’m green all year, but today I’m dressed up bright. Look under my branches, by the gifts and the lights.
In the fridge	The milk and the leftovers stay cold inside me. Open my door and check the top shelf you see.
Under the doormat	Everyone wipes their snowy boots on me. Lift up my corner and you’ll find your key.
In the bathtub	Bubbles and splashes happen in here. Look in the tub, your next clue is near.
Under a pillow	You rest your head on me every night. Check under me, on the left or the right.
In a stocking	I hang by the fireplace with your name on top. Reach down to my toe before you stop.
On the bookshelf	I’m full of stories, old ones and new. Look between the books for your very next clue.
Inside a boot	Kick us off when you come in from the snow. Look inside a boot, that’s where you go.
In the cookie jar	Santa’s snack is kept safe in me. Lift up my lid and see what you see.
By the toothbrushes	Twice a day you scrub your teeth. Look by the toothbrush cup, or underneath.
In the laundry basket	Socks and shirts get tossed into me. Dig to the bottom, and there it will be.
Under a couch cushion	You sit on me to watch a Christmas show. Check under my cushions, high and low.
In a coat pocket	When it’s cold outside, you zip me up tight. Check in my pockets, the left and the right.
In the toy box	At cleanup time, all your toys go in me. Open my lid and take a look, you’ll see.
Under a dining chair	We all sit here for Christmas dinner. Check under a chair if you want to be a winner.
On the bathroom mirror	Pull a funny face and I’ll copy you. Look on my glass for your next clue.
Behind the Advent calendar	I count down the days until Christmas is here. Look behind me, your clue is near.
In the pet’s bed	Someone furry naps on me all day. Check my blanket, then be on your way.

Use each spot once per hunt and keep the order mixed, so kids zigzag between rooms instead of finishing one room at a time.

Where not to hide Christmas clues

Leave out any spot a child would have to climb, reach over or crawl into. That rules out high shelves, the top of the tree and the space behind the television.

Skip the oven, the dryer, the washing machine and the freezer as well.

A small child who learns that clues hide inside appliances may go looking in them later, when no one’s watching. The refrigerator is the exception, because the card sits on a shelf behind a door they already open every day.

Use the stocking clue only if the fireplace is cold that morning. If your tree has glass ornaments on its lower branches, put the tree clue under the tree skirt, so no one reaches through the branches for it.

Two or more kids on one hunt

Siblings on a single chain usually end with the fastest reader solving every clue. Give each child a set in their own color instead, red cards for one and green for the other, with different spots and the same last clue. Both chains finish at the shared gift, and nobody’s left waiting.

Prefer one chain? Then take turns. The youngest reads, or hears, clue one, the next child gets clue two, and so on down the line.

Picture clues for preschoolers: the stocking puzzle hunt

Children of three to five can’t read a rhyme, but they’re excellent at matching pictures. Instead of words, draw the next spot on each card, or take a photograph of it on your phone and print it small. A drawing of a bathtub or a photo of the front door is a clue a three-year-old can follow independently.

A picture-piece hunt goes a step further, and the last piece tells them where the gift is. Print a coloring page, cut it into four to six chunky pieces, and hide one piece in each spot. As children collect the pieces, they assemble the picture on the kitchen table. When the page is complete, it reveals where to look.

We use page 13 of the Christmas Magic coloring pages here. It shows five stockings stuffed with a teddy bear, candy canes, a lollipop, wrapped gifts and a gingerbread person, so once the page is whole, the answer is plain: go look in your stocking. The thick outlines make the pieces easy to line up, and afterward children can color the picture they’ve just rebuilt.

Cut straight lines rather than jigsaw curves for three-year-olds. Four pieces is plenty at that age, and six suits most five-year-olds.

For an even simpler round, play hot and cold with a toy elf. Hide the elf and the paper candy cane hunt are both on our Christmas games for kids page.

A Christmas decorations hunt around the house

A spotting list needs no hiding at all. That makes it the hunt for a December afternoon when you’ve got ten minutes’ notice and no preparation time. Every child gets the list and a pencil, walks through the decorated rooms, ticks off each thing they spot, then shows you where it is.

Copy this list or shorten it for younger kids:

• A star
• A candy cane
• A bow on a gift
• A wreath
• A bell
• A snowflake
• A reindeer
• A snowman
• A pine cone
• An angel
• Santa’s face
• A gingerbread person
• A stocking with a name on it
• A light that blinks
• A Christmas card from someone you know
• Wrapping paper with stripes
• An ornament shaped like an animal
• Something red and something green next to each other
• A snow globe, or anything with snow inside
• Something that smells like Christmas, like pine, oranges or cinnamon

Agree on one rule before anyone starts: point, don’t take. Ornaments stay on the tree and cards stay on the shelf. That protects the glass ornaments, and it saves you from redecorating afterward.

The first child to spot all 20 wins, or set a 15-minute timer and see who has the most. For five-year-olds, cut the list to the first ten. To settle arguments about whether a find counts, borrow the proof rules from the indoor scavenger hunt page.

Coded clues for kids 9 to 12

By about nine, most kids find rhymes too obvious. Give them the same hunt with every clue in code, so they have to decode each card before they can run to the next location.

Write the clue in plain words first, then translate each letter into code. With a number code, where A is 1 and Z is 26, “under the tree” becomes 21-14-4-5-18 / 20-8-5 / 20-18-5-5.

Page 38 of the Spy Games for Kids manual prints three keys on one sheet: the number code, a mirror code where A is Z and B is Y, and a Caesar shift where every letter moves three places, so A becomes D. In the mirror code, “mailbox” turns into NZROYLC. In the shift code, “cookie jar” turns into FRRNLH MDU.

Page 39 adds Morse code, a symbol alphabet and pigpen, and page 40 is a blank page for kids to invent their own. A child who designs a cipher there can write the clues for a younger sibling’s hunt.

Hand out the key with the very first clue. Without it, the hunt stalls at card one. Keep to one or two codes per hunt, too. A different code on every card turns a 30-minute hunt into an afternoon of frustration.

A Christmas party scavenger hunt for a group of kids

A party hunt runs best in small teams. Six to sixteen children fit, which means two to four teams, and the whole thing takes 20 to 30 minutes.

Give every team its own clue chain in its own color. Each chain has the same number of clues, say eight, in different spots, and all of them end at the same box of treat bags. Teams that share one chain end up following each other from room to room, and the slowest team only ever finds empty spots.

Mix the ages within each team, so every team has at least one confident reader. Pairing a reader with a non-reader is the easiest way to keep a four-year-old included.

Announce the out-of-bounds rooms before anyone moves, and close those doors. The hunt’s over when the last team reaches the box. Have a treat bag for every child, so finishing last still pays.

A sit-down hunt for the table

When it’s too cold, too dark or too crowded to run around, a word search becomes a hunt on paper. It also works as one station in a party hunt, where a team has to finish the grid before they’re handed their next clue.

Two of the bonus games at the back of the Christmas word search pack play exactly like this. Santa’s Secret Hunt is a 15 x 15 grid with 12 Christmas words and no word list, played against a 60-second timer, one copy per player. Christmas Eve Mystery is harder: a 20 x 20 grid with 20 hidden words running in all eight directions, again with no list. Since nobody sees the list, the host holds the answer key and gives a point for every target word a player circles.

Print one test page at actual size before you print a stack, so the letters don’t shrink.

Teens and adults

Teens and grown-ups tend to skip the clue cards and go for a photo hunt, where each team races through a list of festive pictures to take on a phone. The version on our Christmas party games page gives the team sizes and a return time.

Outside: a Christmas lights hunt

A lights hunt turns the familiar drive or walk past decorated houses into a competition. Give each child a checklist, and they tick off each display as they spot it. It suits the whole family, takes 30 to 60 minutes, and needs nothing but a list and a flashlight.

Things to spot:

• A blow-up snowman
• A reindeer made of lights
• A house with only blue lights
• A star on a roof
• Santa on a roof or in a chimney
• A wreath on a front door
• Candy canes lining a path
• Icicle lights along a roof edge
• Lights that blink in time to each other
• A Christmas tree in a window
• Snowflakes projected on a wall
• A house with no lights at all

On foot, stay on the sidewalk, carry a flashlight, and dress kids in something light-colored, because December evenings get dark early. In the car, the passengers do the spotting. The driver doesn’t.

For a daytime hunt in the yard or the park, try the winter list on the nature scavenger hunt ideas page. The lights walk itself, with route and timing suggestions, is covered in Christmas activities for kids.

A Christmas scavenger hunt in the classroom

In a classroom, a spotting hunt beats a clue chain. Thirty children chasing one set of cards gets loud fast. Give each pair the decorations list above, trimmed to what’s actually in the classroom or the hallway, and have them write down where they spot each item instead of bringing it back.

Some classes celebrate different holidays, so a winter list can stand in for the Christmas one. Swap Santa and the stocking for a mitten, a snowflake, a scarf and something white.

When a Christmas hunt goes wrong

A clue goes missing. Check your numbered list and retrieve the card yourself, or simply tell the child where to go next. Nobody minds a skipped clue.

A child is stuck. Agree on a hint system before the start, like three hints per hunt. “It’s in the kitchen” is a good first hint, and “it’s somewhere cold” is a good second one.

Someone finds the gift early. Hide the gift last, after every clue is in place, and pick a spot that the clues don’t pass. A closet or the garage works if an adult opens it.

The dog eats a clue. Pets and paper don’t mix, and neither do pets and candy. Keep clues at counter height or behind closed doors in a house with a dog, and skip treats as clue markers.

The youngest falls behind. Let them carry the bag, read the last clue, or open the gift box. For a four-year-old, being the one who discovers the gift matters far more than finding every card.