I’m going off brand this month because I’m currently working on a different type of writing - clues for Easter egg hunts. I love Easter egg hunts. Now. Some of the first hunts I hosted turned competitive and not entirely full of joy. Over the last fifteen years or so I have put a lot of time and effort into making the hunts at my house something special. This is not advice though. It’s just a few things I’ve learned. If anyone happens to benefit, yay!
1) Color-coded hunts work well for younger kids. Each kid is looking for and only allowed to
pick up a certain color of egg.
2) Hunts can be divided with some kids looking inside and
some searching outside. (Or different
rooms in the house if it’s rainy.) This
way you can use more difficult places for bigger kids without them also
snatching up the easy ones before the little ones can get them.
3) If you hide eggs indoors, think carefully about where you
hide them and what directions you give for finding them. If people start dumping out drawers and
emptying cabinets that are nowhere near the hiding places, someone might freak
out.
4) You don’t actually have to put anything inside the
eggs. You can simply have the kids trade
the eggs they found for a basket or bag of goodies. Or have the last egg in a scavenger hunt be
some sort of ticket for the treats.
5) Individual scavenger hunts are awesome for kids old
enough to read. It’s still best to keep
these color-coded for two reasons. One, kids
won’t accidentally find someone else’s egg.
Two, you don’t have to think of as many hiding places. There can be three eggs in the freezer if
they are all different colors.
6) Find someone to play-test your clues. It’s hard to judge the difficulty of
something when you already know the answer.
If a ten-year-old needs two adults to help him figure out one of your
clues, he’ll be well within his rights to give you a hard time about it.
7) An alternative to having kids rummaging through your house
is to have the eggs “hiding” in plain sight. Assign each egg a number, and each clue will
point to one of those numbers. If there
are a hundred eggs around the house, it will still take some hunting to find
the right one. (I write the number on a
piece of masking tape with a bit of ribbon, then clip the egg to the ribbon so
I can stick them all over the walls. You
can also write the numbers on the eggs and just scatter them.)
8) Write down the answers to all of your clues. It is a hassle to re-solve each clue as you
hide them to know which number or hiding place you need next.
9) Kids will enjoy the hunts more if you use a variety of
clues. Don’t make them all lame
riddles. Only use one lame riddle per
child.
10) Inventing new types of clues is fun. Don’t believe me? Let’s switch to Roman numerals for a few
examples. (Roman numerals are fun,
too.) i. A maze with letters printed
throughout. Solving the maze will spell
out a clue. Scramble the letters for an
extra challenge. ii. Lame riddles. iii. A mini crossword puzzle with answers
like upstairs, bathroom, second and drawer.
iv. Codes. You can print
something simple with a cute Easter clipart to represent each letter of the
alphabet. For a super challenge, have a
number represent each letter, only give the kid a few letters to get started and
make him run all over the house to figure out which letters they are. Ex. The letter A is represented by the last
two digits on the serial number inside the microwave. v. Write out the clue with a few extra
letters repeated in the middle of the words and have the kid cross off those
letters to read it. vi. If the kids are hunting numbers, just give a
math problem. It’s not homework if it’s
part of something fun. vii. Write a ridiculously bad nonsense poem where
the first letter of each line spells a clue if you read straight down. viii.
Kids love silly active clues.
Write a list of instructions that involve hopping from one room to
another, spinning around and making funny noises before ending at the hiding
place. The kids know the last step will
lead them straight to the egg, but I have never seen a kid skip ahead. I guess my writing is good even off brand.