Send kids on a big city scavenger hunt with Google Earth

One of the most fun and engaging activities I have developed this school year is the "Big City Scavenger Hunt" in Google Earth. Basically I give students ten things to locate in a given city and they can use all of the tools within Google Earth find them. A Google Slides document is used for curating each found item in the form of a screenshot and a location.

As a way to get to know New York City for an upcoming cardboard skyscraper construction project, teams took on the challenge pictured above.

You can make your own copy of the template slide by clicking here. You'll be able to changes the items to find and make it for any city you'd like. 

I tried to use a combination of ones that could be simply searched like "baseball stadium" but also included some that will really pull at reasoning like "Where in New York City are we going to find a ranger from the National Parks Service?". Some are just totally random like "hot dog cart" that they just have to get lucky searching the streets...although hot dog carts in Manhattan are pretty easy to spot.

There are a ton of curricular adaptations that can be made from this one simple activity:

• When studying states in a region, simply duplicate the first slide several times, make each one a different capital city of a state in that region and have kids divide and conquer using the Iron Chef Eduprotocol. While we are talking Eduprotocols, have groups create a CyberSandwich to compare and contrast their cities and then compare and contrast things other regions found.
• Use the same idea above but have kids explore regions of the world or countries that make up a continent.
• Make the scavenger hunt about famous landmarks around you. Instead of recording the address or location, have them list historical importance.
• Search for evidence of different biomes or landforms around the globe.

From Young Fives through fourth grade, there really isn't an app that is more universally (pun unavoidable) beloved than Google Earth. My students are enthralled every time they get to explore. It's an easy hook and a great way to make them deeper thinkers and digital explorers. 

This activity works well on both Chromebooks and iPads.