Adventures with Seekers the magnetic scavenger hunt

I am really excited to share this Seekers review with you all. Seekers is a magnetic scavenger hunt game for young children. I was kindly gifted the Seekers starter pack and one additional set (I purchased another) in exchange for this review. All words and opinions are my own.

I spotted Seekers in the Blog On Toy awards and instantly knew I wanted to have a closer look. I am always looking for visually appealing activities for my non-verbal autistic son. Then I was lucky enough to meet Sarah, the mum who set up Seekers. Sarah got me even more enthusiastic about trying it out.

Seekers the Magnetic Scavenger Hunt Game

I often print out scavenger hunts for the kids, they don’t last long after being dropped in a puddle or having a pencil go through the paper. I also use the Picture Exchange Communication Sytem with my kids and use that for commenting on things we see when out and about. However neither are as robust or satisfying for a scavenger hunt as Seekers. It is purpose built and it really makes a difference.

Seekers Review – Starter Pack

The Seekers Starter Pack includes a magnetic board, 12 magnets of outdoor / nature trail items, a bag for the board and a bag for the magnets.

One of the major benefits of the board is it is waterproof, we did drop ours a couple of times in the muddy woods and it was looking sparkly new after a quick wipe. Kids drop things so its great to see Seekers is robust. The magnets are strong enough that even when we dropped the board they stayed on. It is also light so easily carried by the kids.

The starter kit includes 12 items to find when outdoors. There is a nice selection of items including leaves, animal tracks, a bird and a spider web. We managed to complete our scavenger hunt with the starter pack in the garden at home, out at the local woods and at the park.

A nice touch is the inclusion of the countryside code on the back of the board. A good reminder to teach our kids about respecting the countryside.

The pack also includes a drawstring bag to keep your board in. My son really enjoyed taking this out and it gave him a sense of ownership of the game. It’s also very handy for storing the board when not in use.

Along with the carry bag is a small drawstring bag to keep the set of magnets in. Additional sets have the name of the set on the bag so it is easy to find the magnets you are looking for.

Once an item is found the magnet gets turned over where a ‘well done’ message is displayed. This is another big plus for me the visual positive reinforcement works really well for my son and is a good motivator. My youngest particularly enjoyed turning over the magnets although needed a bit more encouragement to actually find the items before turning them over.

My kids love to be outside and really enjoy muddy walks in the woods. I found that Seekers gave us more opportunity to encourage speech / communication. It also helped us to look more closely at our surroundings. My youngest was fascinated by the animal tracks we pointed out.

My eldest son was very impressed with himself for finding a Y shaped twig. I on the other hand was impressed at how well the boys shared the board and took turns turning over items as we found them.

Additional Add on Sets

There are a number of additional add on sets you can get to go with the Seekers board. Sets available include:

• Happy Campers
• Seaside
• Car Journey
• At the Park
• Supermarket
• Shapes and Colours
• Christmas

With more planned for the future.

Each add on set includes 12 new item magnets and a mini drawstring bag to keep them in.

Seekers Review – Supermarket Set

My 6 year old is a sensory seeker and can often find supermarkets overstimulating. This can lead to him being overexcited and generally make shopping a bit of a pain. I was so impressed with the Seekers Supermarket set. It kept him really focused while we did a big shop and he really enjoyed himself.

I wasn’t sure how he would cope with just finding items as we have used visual shopping lists in the past. So I decided to turn over a couple of the items that I knew we didn’t want to buy before we started so we could pick up the items as we found them. It was easy to slightly adapt the game to suit his needs which is always a good thing.

I will be using this supermarket set regularly, it was great for my son to have an enjoyable and helpful activity to do while I got the food shopping done.

Seekers Review – Shapes and Colours Set

The nice thing about the shapes and colours set is it requires a bit more thought about what you need to find. It can also be used anywhere. We do lots of commenting with books using PECS and this set can easily be used to support similar commenting and communication activities.

As a logical and visual thinker the first time we did colours my son got his pens out and happily showed me the correct colours as he turned over the magnets! We did manage to find some different items after a few goes.

Shapes was a little harder but a great challenge for my son. I was impressed we managed to find all the shapes but we did have to go hunting around the house for a heart and star.

I really recommend Seekers ..

The Seekers scavenger hunt game is brilliant for any child but I really would reccomend it to young autistic children who are visual thinkers. My non-verbal son got the concept straight away and really enjoyed the challenge. The sets are lovely and I can see us using them regularly.

They are ideal for Christmas / Birthday presents. It would also be great for schools, speech therapists and forest schools. I am planning to get the kids another add on set as a stocking filler, I just need to decide which set to pick!

The sets are very reasonably priced at £14.99 for the starter pack and £6.99 for the additional sets if bought from the Seekers website.

You can also purchase from amazon. These are affiliate links, if you purchase from these links I may recieve a small commission. This is at no additional cost to you but it does support my blog:

Have you tried scavenger hunts with the kids, what do you think of Seekers? Let me know in the comments.