Reply to 9 y/o girl winter bday party - help me do it on a budget?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I always do a scavenger hunt for my December birthday kid.  (Did it at ages 5, 7, 8, and 9–now he says he’s bored with it, but it was great while it lasted!). We have a tight knit neighborhood, so I typically ask neighbors if I can leave clues on their front stoops, and then the kids race around piecing together clues.  The prize at the end of the scavenger hunt is typically the big party activity (such as new game to play) or the party favors.  One year they actually gathered all the party snacks.  The scavenger hunt usually takes 30+ minutes, and costs virtually nothing.  Actually, twice now I’ve given them all a clue sheet when they arrive, so they spend 20+ minutes working on the clues as people arrive, and then they set out on the hunt, where they pick up pieces, so it ends up occupying them for a long time.

Anyway, I’m bummed that my December kid doesn’t want one again this year, but now my November kid is asking for one.  :)[/quote]

Not the op but I love this idea, can you give an example of clues you give? And what kind of game was at the end? [/quote]

We actually do a lot of scavenger hunts, and I have a bunch of different models.  The best birthday one was probably for my sports loving kid, when we happened to live in a neighborhood where all the streets were named for colleges and universities. I asked about 8 neighbors if I could leave stuff on their porches.  Then I made up a worksheet that had clues to their addresses, and the clues were all sports riddles, so “points scored by a field goal + players on the court for a basketball game + Michael Jordan’s number + the city where the university of Michigan is located” would get the answer 3523 Ann Arbor Ln.  They each had a worksheet like that.  Obviously, they had to work together and ask for adult help occasionally because they were eight, and the clues were hard.

Once a critical mass had filled out the worksheets, we set off around the neighborhood looking for those addresses.  At each house, they got a bag of stuff that was one of the goodies to go in their goody bags.  When we got home, they spread it all out on a table and packed their own goody bags.

Sometimes I’ve done address clues like that, and at each house, they get a puzzle piece, and when they put the pieces together, it’s a picture of where the prize is waiting for them.

I’ve also done many scavenger hunts with rhyming stanzas.  We did one all around our town (walkable, inside the beltway suburb), at various familiar landmarks—little free libraries, elementary school sign, etc.  For those, I might write “next to the books that are free / where the juiciest berries might be / from the soccer field you will see / our favorite mulberry [blank].” As the clue would lead you to believe, there’s a very familiar mulberry tree by the soccer field and the little free library, and I would have left another note by its base.  That note would have another rhyming stanza, and we’d go through about 6-10 of those until we of course end up on a friend/neighbor’s porch, where the goods are hiding.

Anyway, those are just a couple fun ways to do scavenger hunts.  I see you also asked about the game that was the prize from one—I had just bought 3 different kinds of games, including a board game, a ninja warrior kind of game, and one of those disgusting jelly belly games.  Some of the kids played those, and some just kept running around.  [/quote]

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