Treasure Hunts!

My children love treasure hunts so I was delighted to have the opportunity to review some treasure hunts from Clued in Kids.
The aim of Clued in Kids is to teach academics as well as social skills and being part of a team by means of treasure hunts.

We were able to review Multiplication Dragons
and the Thanksgiving Treasure Hunt.
  Multiplication Dragons is actually five treasure hunts covering the 2x to 6x table. I am keen to re-enforce the tables for Younger Daughter so this was ideal. In fact, all three of the younger children (aged 14, 8 and 5) worked on these together. Middle Son helped with the reading and guided his younger siblings.
The Thanksgiving Treasure hunt probably seems like a strange choice for English people but the children have learned about Thanksgiving. I hope to read Cranberry Thanksgiving at our home education group in a few weeks so brushing up on Thanksgiving seemed a useful choice. Again, all three children worked on this as a collaborative effort. 
The Treasure Hunts that we used are suitable for a variety of ages. Children who are not competent readers will need help. They are ideal for siblings of different ages to work on together. The recommended ages for Multiplication Dragons is from 7 to 9 and for the Thanksgiving Hunt from 4 to 104. Realistically, none of my four year olds would have been able to manage the Thanksgiving Hunt alone as a reasonable degree of literacy is required in order to be able to fill in a simple word puzzle.
The treasure hunts are downloadable as PDFs. Once I had downloaded them, I printed them. The A4 sheets are then cut into two. Each piece of paper has a clue plus a note for the parent about where to hide the clue. There is a space for a name at the top so that older children can be given more difficult clues. We didn't use this as the children worked together.

There is also a helpful summary sheet which needs to be kept well away from participating children!

Clued In Kids says that the hunts take less than 10 minutes to set up and I found this to be accurate. They are very easy to use. There seem to be able 12 clues per hunt. 
They also note that if some place happens to be absent in your particular home then to hold onto the clue, ask the child to do something different instead and then give them the clue. The only places that caused us any difficulty were the mail box and pantry as we have neither of these. We used the letter slot

instead of the mail box for clues although it wasn't large enough when required for treasure so this went in a nearby umbrella stand. A food cupboard was a suitable substitute for the pantry.
There were a variety of hiding places:

with a plant,

with the socks,

in the dishwasher and more.
There were clues to look at in the mirror,

clues that required a little maths,

clues that meant activity

and clues which involved words.

 

Of course, there was treasure. The type of treasure is at the discretion of the person setting up the hunt. For the 2x table, I used some little books which I thought would be a hit but no, the children preferred to have food so I resorted to crisps (potato chips) which worked well for the other hunts.

What did we think? Not surprisingly, the hunts were popular with the children. They made a break in the day and were fun. They are easy to set up. What do they cost? The Thanksgiving Treasure Hunt costs $5.99 (about £3.74) and the Multiplication Dragons cost $19.99 (about £12.48). Clued in Kids also produce some seasonal clue books and cards. Do pop over the the Clued in Kids website to see the range of treasure hunts available. If you enjoyed this post you may like to follow Delivering Grace by Google Friend Connect, G+,Facebook, Pinterest or e-mail.