Multitrack treasure hunt for kids.

This weekend I spent in the wilderness for the annual canoe hike. A recurring event is the treasure hunt. Since we’ve been doing it for a few years we’ve learned a few tricks I figured I’d share.

The basic idea is to send the kids out on a hunt with a map. They get a clue that point to a location on the map where they find the next clue to the next location and so on until they reach the treasure (typically a bag of candy).

This year we brought 14 kids, so there’ll be several teams roaming around simultaneously. We had the following objectives:

* Hard questions for the older kids, easier questions for the younger kids.

* Not having to write too many question or hide too many clues.

* Not all teams go the same track, as that would ruin the fun if you can just follow the team ahead of you.

Here’s what we did:
First, copy the map. You’ll need one copy per team.

Second, write hard multi-choice questions on pieces of paper. You’ll need as many question-papers as the longest track. Use only the upper half of the paper, as you’ll need the bottom half for the simple questions.

Now design the longest track. Take a paper, write “start” at the top and mark the correct answer of the question with a symbol – “+”.

Take a map, write “Group 1/Hard” on it.

Decide where you want the group to go first. Mark that location on the map with “+”. Take the next question-paper and write the name of the location on the top corner – that’s where you’ll put that clue later. Mark the correct answer of this question (i.e. number 2 for “Group 1/Hard” with a new symbol – “X” – in front of it.

Decide the group’s next stop and mark it on the map with an X. Take next question and repeat.  Note: You must never reuse symbols! Let’s say you have five questions. Make sure the last location points to were you’ll hide the treasure.

What you have now is a track to follow and a map to find the track. The wrong answers have no symbols in front of them; we’ll fix that later.

If you have a second group that shall use the hard questions, simply take a new map and write “Group 2/Hard” on it.

As you remember the start question’s correct answer is marked with “+”. Decide which of the locations you have already decided on you want the second group to go to first. Let’s say you want group 2 to go first to the location Group 1 knows as “X”. Simply write a “+” on the second map on the location where the “X” is on the first map. Continue until they have found all clues, make sure the last clue’s answer symbol is pointing to the treasure on the map.

Now, write simpler questions on the bottom half of the question papers. Mark the correct answers with a symbol.

Take a map and mark it with “Group 1/Easy”.

On the “Start” question, the correct answer might be marked with “#”. Decide to which of the existing clue caches they should go to first. Mark that place on the map with “#”. Maybe this group needn’t have as long a track as the first set, so feel free to point to the treasure after three or four clues.

Now for each question, mark the wrong answers with a unique symbol. Place that symbol on all maps. That is a dead end, there should be nothing there to find! You can just as well place the ‘wrong-answer-symbol’ on the same place on all maps.

Now the three maps have the same symbols, but the symbols marking the clues are on different places on every map. Thus, there’s no cheating possible. The groups will also head off in different directions when the hunt begins.

Before you gather the kids, you obviously have to place the clues ‘in the world’ so to speak. Since you have written on each clue/question where it is located (you did that when you set the first track for” Group 1/Hard”) just take the shortest route and hide the clues.

As we were doing this with canoes, we put the clues in plastic bottles, tied a string to the bottle and a stone to the other end of the string and let them float in the water. You might be in your garden or in the woods, so hide the clues as makes sense. Depending on the age of the kids and so on you might want to make the clues easy to find once you get in the correct vicinity.

We realized a bit too late that we could have saved ourselves a second trip to pick up the clues (no littering, you know!) by making checkboxes on the papers. Give every group a pen, and ask them to mark a checkbox. If they filled in the last empty check box, they were the last group to visit that clue, and they can bring it back.

Remember to use fewer checkboxes on the clues that are not to be visited by every group!

Gather the kids, divide them into groups (give every group a cool name, like “Wild Kids” or “Wolves”), explain that they will find questions and that the symbol in front of the correct answer will be the location of the next clue. Also tell them that there are “false” symbols on the map and they are not supposed to visit every symbol on the map. Set them off and enjoy an hour of piece and quiet.

–Jesper