The children, two girls and four boys 2 to 7 years old, were discovered in a Tallahassee playground on Thursday. Two men, Douglas Edward Zimmerman, 27 years old, and Michael Houlihan, 28, were arrested in the case and charged with child abuse.

Subsequently, the police here obtained warrants to search a house in Northwest Washington and a warehouse in Northeast Washington, both believed to have been occupied by the Finders. Captain White said they had seized boxes of records, documents and computer programs.

''We have a very long, tedious process of reviewing this material ahead of us,'' the captain said.

Detectives in the investigation said the review would require the weekend at least. The detectives said that they had begun to doubt that child pornography was involved. However, he said that the evidence indicated that children were involved in rituals. They declined to comment on reports that the Finders were worshipers of the devil.

According to the A.P., the authorities have received a memorandum from a man who said he owns the Washington house asserting that the children were on a vacation trip in Florida with the approval of their mothers. A spokesman for Joseph diGenova, the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, declined to comment on the memo, the A.P. said. Search Also Made in Virginia

In neighboring Virginia, the authorities said they had completed their part in the investigation by searching five places in Madison County where members of the group were said to have occupied farms and homes.