Weekly Quest · Learn
Map Your Neighborhood
Map Your Neighborhood is Week 17 of Outside's 52-week family quest calendar — a 90-minute walk that turns your own block into new territory worth exploring. Families head outside together, pay close attention, and come home with a hand-drawn map they made themselves. It is one of those afternoons that sticks.
This page is the public web guide for Map Your Neighborhood, Week 17 of the Outside family adventure app's 52-week quest calendar. The quest asks families with children ages 4 to 14 to spend roughly 90 minutes walking their neighborhood and drawing a simple map that includes exits, parks, water features, and friendly neighbors. Rated Medium difficulty and worth 350 XP, the quest earns families the Neighborhood Navigator badge when completed inside the Outside app. The page covers how to run the quest well, how to adapt it for different ages, and what lasting skills and memories families take away.
| XP | 350 |
|---|---|
| Time | 90 minutes |
| Week | 17 of 52 |
| Badge | Neighborhood Navigator |
| Difficulty | Medium |
Why this quest is worth an afternoon
Most families know their neighborhood the way they know a familiar song — they can hum along but could not write down the words. This quest changes that. When you slow down, put a pencil to paper, and actually look at the streets you drive every day, familiar places reveal themselves as genuinely interesting. That park two blocks over has a creek running behind it. The corner house with the blue door belongs to a retired teacher who knows every family on the block.
Outside designed this quest to be joyful first and educational second. The map is a souvenir, not a test. What families remember is the walk itself — the conversation, the small discoveries, the shared attention. That is the whole point.
What you will actually do out there
Before you leave the house, sit together for five minutes and talk about what you hope to find. Let the kids lead this conversation. Maybe someone wants to find out where the creek goes. Maybe a younger child wants to find every fire hydrant on the block. Write down two or three things you are curious about, then head outside.
Walk slowly and without a fixed route. Notice what is around you and say it out loud when you spot something worth remembering. When you find a landmark worth keeping — a park, a neighbor's house, a dead-end alley that connects to somewhere surprising — mark it on a rough sketch in your notebook. Take a photo or stop and sit for a moment before heading home. The quest is tracked and completed inside the Outside app, where you will log your reflection and earn your badge.
How to draw a map that actually works
A good neighborhood map does not need to be to scale or artistically impressive. It needs to be useful and honest. Start with your house at the center of the page. Draw the streets you know first, then fill in what you discover as you walk.
Mark four categories the Outside quest specifically calls out: exits (the roads that take you out of the neighborhood), parks and green spaces, any water you can find, and the homes of neighbors you trust. Use simple symbols and a small legend in the corner so anyone in the family can read it. Younger kids can add color or draw pictures of the things they spotted. Older kids may want to pace out distances or note which streets are busiest. Both approaches are equally valid.
Making it work for every age
Kids around 4 to 6 are natural noticers. Give them one job: spot things that are red, or find every tree on the block, or count the dogs they see. Their observations go on the map as small drawings.
Kids ages 7 to 10 can hold the notebook and be in charge of deciding what gets recorded. They tend to love the authority of that role and will take it seriously.
Tweens and older kids often engage most when given a genuine challenge — ask them to figure out the best walking route from your house to the nearest park, or to identify a neighbor none of you have met yet. Let them propose additions to the map that the younger kids did not think of. The 90-minute window is enough time for everyone to contribute something real.
What your family takes home
The finished map is an artifact worth keeping. Pin it to the wall, fold it into a kitchen drawer, or photograph it and save it somewhere you will find it years from now. Families who return to this quest in a later season are often surprised how much the neighborhood has changed.
Beyond the map, this quest quietly builds a set of skills Outside calls ambient skills: mapping, local awareness, and basic planning. Kids who have walked their block with attention and drawn what they saw begin to carry that observational habit into other settings — trails, new cities, school field trips. The Neighborhood Navigator badge earned in the Outside app marks a genuine shift: your family has started to read the landscape wherever you go.
Draw the one spot from today's walk that you want to go back to, and write one sentence about why it caught your attention.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need any special supplies to complete this quest?
No special gear required. Comfortable shoes, water, and something to draw on are all you need. A small notebook and a few pencils work well. The quest is logged and the badge is earned inside the Outside app, so make sure your device is charged before you head out.
Our neighborhood does not have parks or creeks. Can we still do this quest?
Absolutely. The map categories are starting points, not requirements. If there is no water nearby, mark the nearest shady spot or a bench where you would feel comfortable stopping. The goal is to document your real neighborhood honestly, not to match a template. Whatever is actually there is worth mapping.
How do we handle kids who are very different ages — say a 5-year-old and a 13-year-old?
Give each child a role that matches their pace and interest. The younger one can be the spotter, calling out things they notice. The older one can be the cartographer, deciding how those observations get recorded. When both feel genuinely useful, the age gap stops being a problem and starts being an advantage.
What if the kids want to rush through it or lose interest partway through?
Build in a stopping point — a porch step, a park bench, a curb in the shade — where you sit together for a few minutes and talk about what you have noticed so far. That pause usually resets the energy. The Outside app reflection prompt gives you a natural finish line, so kids know the walk has a real ending rather than trailing off.