How to Hold a Treasure Hunt Family Activity
Hide Easter Baskets, Easter Chocolate With Fun Clues
Feb 21, 2009
Easter egg hunts are good for small children and adding some touches gets preteens and teenagers involved in a creative treasure hunt.
Materials for the Hunt and for Easter Baskets
Gather the following items:
- Five plastic fillable eggs (available at most dollar stores)
- Paper cut into 5" X 7" squares
- Transparent tape
- An enormous bunch of keys on a key chain (you may have lots of spare keys around the house or hardware stores will often give you old cut keys)
- A small box or chest with key entry
- Enough foil-wrapped chocolate eggs for everyone to enjoy
The hunt’s purpose is to send your children racing around the house seeking clues leading to the big finale: their personal Easter baskets. Clues should be handwritten in bold bright letters and rolled up inside each plastic egg.
Step-By-Step Scavenger Hunt Instructions
1. Tape a piece of paper decorated with bright spring flowers and the first clue in a high profile spot in the house:
Easter time is here again/It's time to be merry and time to begin/Look for the first spot on our joyous hunt/Inside (a child's) laundry hamper/Quick! We've begun!
2. Your second clue, located in a hamper, has an opening from a famous Easter quote that your children will recognize:
Here comes Peter Cottontail/Hoppin' down the bunny trail/Let’s hope that your next clue will not make you fail/Seek out the special place where good kids should be/When they are smelly or soggy you see/The place that you need is where water makes sense/And soap and shampoo are often intense.
3. If the group struggles to figure out the next clue spot, (the bathtub) whisper the location to the youngest child. Place a small bag of foil-wrapped chocolate along with clue #4 inside your small lockable box or chest with the enormous key chain on top and this clue:
Keys make you crazy, make you fumble and scream/But one of these keys opens this chest and then you’ll beam/For inside you will find your next clue and there’s more/For these keys also lead you to chocolates galore.
Make sure that one of the keys on the giant keychain opens the chest!
4. This clue should be located inside plastic egg in the chest:
Congratulations! You are so clever and quick/And here we thought you might give up or pretend you were sick/You have made it this far/You should be so proud/You will find your next clue in a thing that is cold/It’s not near a bush, couch or tree, truth be told/But nearest to calcium and cheddar that is old.
5. This final clue should be located inside the dairy drawer of your refrigerator:
This is the end, you have made it, my Easter time friends/And I saved this best part until this point, at the bitter end/Your big Easter prize waits in the hardest-to-find place/And it is there that you must race/ It’s under that big puffy thing that holds you high when you rest/Sharing space with the bunnies, books and dirty socks, I would guess.
End the scavenger hunt with Easter baskets filled with a sampling of each child’s favorite things: small solid chocolate bunnies, movie tickets for teens and preteens, marshmallow rabbits and stickers and stuffed chicks for younger children. Place the baskets under each child’s bed.
Spending the Easter holidays having a family treasure hunt brings together children ranging in ages and interests as they pull together, decipher clues and eat some chocolate along the way.
