My DD's pirate party is next Sunday (finally!). I've been planning it for months! I have the 3-4 year old treasure hunt all ready. For them I just did a "walk X amount of steps to tree, etc. to the sand box where they will find goody bags" kind of thing. For the older kids, specifically ages 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10, I need a more complicated idea. I want to do an "X marks the spot" idea, but want the X to be subtle, like some criss-crossed weeds or something. Should I bury it or hide it or what? The "treasure" will be individual goody bags containing compasses, pirate fruit snacks, mardi gras beads, etc. (treasure stuff). My back yard is good sized, is half dirt b/c of the shade, and kid friendly so I'm not worried if I DO need to bury it. :) Help me ladies!! I'm lost! Lol.
How about a scavenger hunt of party items to bring to their parent, and once they have been found they are given a clue to the "treasure" that way they are busy for about an hour looking all over the party area for the items they need to get the clue in the first place.
I think I would hide the treasure(s) instead of burying them unless they were in a sealed airtight container. I would hate for ground moisture to get in and spoil your surprise. We used to do a lot of treasure hunts with clues of where to look for the next clue to send them on their hunt. Example: What's blank and white and read all over? (first clue in the newspaper laying on the front porch) next clue could be found among the bills, letters and magazines (the mailbox) You could tape clues to a bicycle seat (walk 12 feet, then find something to ride) , a fence post, the back door all directing them to the treasure. You could have one big treasure chest with the goody bags inside. One time we hid a treasure chest in the ice chest that had been sitting on our patio for months. Have fun!
personally I wouldn't want to 'bury' the treasure but to make it more challenging for the older kids, you could hide clues instead of the items themselves. What I've done for my kids' egg hunt was give them a sheet where their 'treasures' were written in code (basically, type it out and then convert it to wingdings font), then I put pieces of the code into hollow plastic eggs. So once they found all the eggs, they could piece together the code to figure out what their treasures were, and when they were done I'd bring out their treasures.
no make it a puzzle they have to figure out a riddle. cover some of them up one or 2 but the riddles will make it more fun with your age spread the riddles have to be fairly easy like lead to a tree and put in a branch or something. put it in like a empty bucket for the older ones. or mabe in a bush. or tape to an outdoor table underneath. make sure the riddle tells them to look underneath though. have fun sounds like a blast.
