Summer time is the best time to get your friends and family together for a fun game. Our family loves to get together and have fun large games. We have some pretty competitive children so it is fun to see how quickly they can solve the clues and figure out where the treasure is! Have you ever wanted to plan a scavenger hunt for your kids but not sure where to start? Have no fear, we are here to walk you through it!
There are so many options when i comes to How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids. Will you have a theme, will you plan indoors or outdoors, do you want to have control and keep it in your yard or take it to a local park? Maybe you are on vacation and want to take a natural approach to it! We will touch base on the general ideas on how to plan a scavenger hunt for your kids that you can then customize to your own family’s needs.
How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids
Pick Your Theme – There are countless options when it comes to themes for your scavenger hunt! You can choose pirates who invade the local neighborhood and hide buried treasure like gold, pearls, and coins. You could choose a western theme with a fight between cowboys and indians with a bank robbery and hidden money. No matter what you choose make sure it flows well together and that you know will keep them entertained for a little while at least! I love watching their minds work hard to figure out the clues.
Location, Location, Location – When it comes to How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids, I can not express this enough! I have seen where some scavenger hunts had been planned over a very large area and it made it a bit frustrating for kids and parents alike. Take into consideration your audience. You are dealing with children and possible a wide variety of ages. You need to make sure the location is a safe place like your backyard or a friends barn. What is great about scavenger hunt is that it can even be played on rainy days so the inside of your house can work too for a location.
Where to Hide Treasure – Now that you have decided on a theme and location next you have to come up where you are going to hide the treasures. These need to be challenging enough that your children will be able to figure it out but take some time. You don’t want to hide them like you do Easter Eggs. These need to be hiding and easy to find based on your clues. We will cover clues in the next section. You can hide the treasures in boxes, under rugs, hanging in a tree, or tucked away in their swing sets. Make it challenging but not impossible! Keep reading for more ways on How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids.
Get Creative with Clues – When it comes to clues, the key is to make them simple yet challenging enough to keep them interested. If you make them too difficult then you will lose your child’s interest pretty quickly. There are some templates you can find to help you with the clues or you can make them up on your own. You know your child the best and should be able to know what they can figure out with some ease. If you see that they are having a little difficulty, give them just a bit and see if they can figure it out the clue. Being able to do it on their own is a huge accomplishment and will give them a confidence booster! For younger kids that don’t quite know how to read yet, you can create their clue with little pictures and images to help them out a little bit. Older kids you can make it a bit more tricky to get their brains working!
Do a Run-Through – Last on our list on How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids is one of the biggest fails in planning and executing a scavenger hunt for your kids is that it doesn’t work. You spend all the time and effort to make this scavenger hunt fun, exciting, challenging, and successful. Once you have it all prepared and set up, then do a run through. See how long it takes you to go through it. Clearly you know where everything is hidden so it wouldn’t take you near as long. Nothing is more disappointing than building all the hype of an amazing scavenger hunt just for it to not work out properly. So wait until the kids are in bed and do a run through. This gives you the time to tweak anything and make it better!
Ok parents, now that you have been equipped with How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids, it is time to start planning it! Summer time is about having fun and going exploring, it’s not about homework and school! Some of our best adventures happen during the summer with the sun is warm, the days are long, and the memories last forever. At the end of the scavenger hunt will be the ultimate treasure. You can decide what exactly this will be. A few suggestions, it can be a pile of candy, a new toy, a trip reveal like to Disney, or maybe another sibling announcement? You can make it as big or as little as you want! Most kids will just be happy to have completed the scavenger hunt and got to THE TREASURE! Let us know what you thought about this How To Plan A Scavenger Hunt For Your Kids and if you had any success. We would love to hear from you! We love to celebrate with our readers as they create memories with their families!
If you loved this how to plan a scavenger hunt for kids post, be sure to pin it to your favorite kids activity board so you have it the next time your kids tell you they are bored. Post a photo of you and the kids doing your scavenger hunt and tag us social media @DadLifeLessons. We love seeing people use our tips!
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