I did a treasure hunt for Maisie and Charlie last weekend and they loved it. I did it to distract them from fighting as they had been getting at each other all morning, and they became best buddies again as they had to work together on it. They really enjoyed it! You can make it harder or easier depending on thier age.

 

 

You need a small prize for the treasure, gold covered chocolate coins are good, and those little candy necklaces, but really you can use anything that would be considered a treat a small toy, colouring book, crayons etc.

 

Paper

 

Pen

 

The idea of the game is to leave a trail of clues on the bits of paper in various diffierent hiding places, for older children you would use word clues perhaps with a riddle for them to work out that will take them to the next clue, for younger ones a simple picture of the location of the next clue (for example if it is under the bed you can draw a picture of a bed.) for children that are learning to read it is a good idea to put a picture with the word underneath. Basically each clue leads to the next clue until they reach the treasure. The clues and treasure can be placed inside or out or a mixture of both. I had my two going in and out upstairs and downstairs for a good half hour before they got to the treasure. I used a lockable box for my treasure with the key attached to the last clue but you can use anything to put the treasure in. The easiest way to leave the clues is to work backwards, hide the treasure then leave the clues each leading to the last one you left. How many clues you leave is up to you it depends how long you want to keep them occupied for. I left about 20 this took about half an hour.

You could always jazz it up a bit for a birthday party by making a treasure chest out of a carboard box, and put party bags in it or a prize for all the kids. You could do the clues on bits of coloured paper. Anything goes really. You can have a group of kids working together or idividually. There are endless variations to it.

Have fun

Jay