Clued In Kids Treasure Hunts

 

Do your kids love treasure hunts?
Do you want to bring some fun into your days?
Do you desire to have activities that are exciting and require very little setup?
Do you want your kids to see the fun in learning?

If so, then this review is for you!

We recently were sent some fun resources from Clued In Kids. This company offers treasure and scavenger hunts that meet all of the above criteria. They're exciting, they require little setup, and they show how learning is fun! They have all sorts of hunts to meet your needs: holiday/seasonal, nutrition, educational, sports, party, and more. We chose a printable Homework Reward Treasure Hunt  and the Pirate Treasure Hunt Clue Book.

Clued In Kids is a fairly new company, but the dream started decades ago. The founder has been creating hunts for many years. She revived the dream in order to give her girls a memorable way of learning, encourage them to stay healthy by moving, and instill the motto "Treasure The Journey" because life is precious.

The hunts themselves are extremely easy to use because all the work has been done for you. The only thing you have to do is hide the 12 clues. The clues are numbered, contain activities and puzzles that lead to the location of the next clue, and have a place at the bottom where it tells you exactly where to hide that particular clue. They claim that it is an 8-minute setup, but, honestly, I'm not sure it even took that long!

The first hunt we did was the Homework Reward Treasure Hunt. This hunt comes as a printable PDF and costs $5.99 (currently FREE with a newsletter subscription). It's designed to get the school-aged kids through the day and give them a way of getting their wiggles out at the end. All I had to do was download the file, print, cut, and hide. Simple. There is a line at the top of each clue to add a child's name. Assigning specific clues to each kid can save some frustration during the activity. After I looked through the clues, I determined that most were a little difficult for my 6- and 4-year-old by themselves. I left the name lines blank and encouraged my oldest (8) to include his younger siblings. That didn't stop him from pushing past them or grabbing the clues first though. He may have been a little excited, ha. It was a good lesson about teamwork and taking turns.

The second hunt was the Pirate Treasure Hunt Clue Book. Not only do my kids love treasure hunts (who doesn't?), they love all things pirate. I knew this hunt would definitely be a hit with them. This hunt comes as a booklet that you simply tear the pages out and costs $8.99. Since I understand the nature of children (especially my 2-year-old who collected all the clues from the first hunt and enjoyed crumbling them), and wanted to be able to use these again, I took the time to laminate them to ensure that they'd last more than one hunt. (Actually, my sweet husband laminated and cut them for me while I finished making dinner. I think I'll keep him.) Now the dry erase markings can be wiped off and the activity used again. This particular hunt is labeled for kids ages 4+ and contains some easier clues, like finding the hidden picture and simple dot-to-dots. I knew that this hunt would be perfect to assign clues to specific kids. Each of the 3 older children had 3 of their own clues, while the remaining 3 clues were action-based (saying aaaarrrr! in your best pirate voice, hopping around like you have a wooden leg, etc.) and were to be completed by all.

Since this was our second hunt, the kids knew exactly what to expect and were extremely excited. Having the names on the clues helped tremendously. Even our 8-year-old was completely content letting the other two kids figure out their assigned clues. Of course, they all helped search for each clue. Since this hunt had easier clue activities and had specific names on the clues, it went more smoothly for us than the first one.

The only negative thing I have to say about this product is regarding the formatting of the Homework Reward Treasure Hunt. If you look at the above picture, you'll notice that the spacing of many of the letters is off. Either the letters are overlapping or there is too big of a space separating the letters in a single word. While this is not a huge issue, it is like this on every clue and made it somewhat difficult for the children to read in places. I think if the formatting is redone to be a bit more professional, the product would be perfect.

My kids absolutely loved these hunts! Of course, they loved their treasures (a package of Oreo cookies the first time and make-your-own ice cream sundae the second), but I think they would have had just as much fun on the hunt even without a tangible prize at the end. It was cute watching their creativity as they made their own clues for treasure hunts afterward. The hunts themselves last about 30 minutes. The kids had so much fun that they've asked multiple times when we can do another one.


If you're looking for a fun, simple activity, I highly recommend these treasure hunts. I have a feeling we'll be purchasing more in the future, too. They would be a fun addition to a party or a sleepover. There's even a puzzlemaker tool on the website where you can input your own questions and answers and it will generate a clue for you. Fun!
 

There are so many different hunts that they offer. You can read more fun reviews of  Clued In Kids on the Schoolhouse Review Crew blog.

G is for Geocaching

Geo What!?

Geocaching.

What in the world is geocatching?

No, it's geo-cash-ing. Its kind of like a high tech treasure hunt. You go online and get GPS coordinates for what is called a geocache, the treasure. You either download the coordinates to a GPS or smartphone, or you manually put them in. Go out and follow the GPS, the map, till you get close. Then start looking for a good spot to hide something. When you find the cache sign the logbook, maybe trade something, then put the cache back where you found it. Go home and log the find online where you got the coords from in the first place.

That sounds like a lot of fun!

Oh, it's a blast, you should try it.

I don't know how many times I have had this conversation with somebody in the past four months. Erika and I had heard of geocaching years ago, but when we looked into it there were not enough caches around to merit the puchase of a GPS unit to try and get into it. We were into the idea before we had kids, but having them adds a whole new aspect of fun. Back in June Erika started to think about it again and thought it would make a good family hobby to get into. When I checked geocaching.com I found nearly 20,000 caches within 100 miles of our house. There are plenty of caches to find but we needed a GPS. We decided it would be our anniversary present to each other and began looking. I did the research online and ended up going into REI to talk to somebody in person. That was a good decision. I ended up walking out with a Garmin eTrex 20. I'm not going to go into a lot of technical detail here, but in the research I did and in a few conversations I've had with GPS knowledgeable people, get a Garmin. Garmin has a patent or something on their antenna technology so their unit update faster and are much more accurate than others. If you do not want to spend the money on an independent unit and you have a smartphone running iOS, Android, or Windows Phone you can download an app for that. This way at a limited cost you can either try or get into geocaching.

Once you have a way of finding coordinates you need to find some coordinates. (Yes, that was intended.) I've already mentioned geocaching.com. That's the big one with "all" the caches, but there is also a new kid on the block. Opencaching.com was started by Garmin as a free alternative to geocaching.com, but does not have nearly as many caches listed. Geocaching.com does have a free option, but it limits use, a lot. I don't know what all is limited since I payed the $10 for the year after our first time out. One thing you don't get from them for free is paperless caching. When you download your coords to your GPS under a free account you will need to print out any details or clues you may need for what you are going to find and take the PAPER with you. (I'm all about going paperless lately with my Kindle and iPad.) With a payed account all those details go on to the GPS with the coords, if your GPS can take them. Let me tell you, being able to see the details on the device is soooo nice. Also, a piece of advice that the guy at REI gave me that makes a lot of sense. If you're planning to go out caching don't go for the caches real close to the house, drive a little bit. Save the real close ones for those spontaneous lets go caching times, or for a task for your older kids to do on their own, once they get the hang of it. As well, if you get into the geocaching game and want to load a lot of caches on your GPS at once, look into pocket queries. This can be a little tricky, so take your time and do it step-by-step. I use GSAK to help get the files on my GPS.

Ok, enough with the technical mumbo, what have we done? The first time we went out I loaded up four or five sets of coords and we went for a drive around the area to some easy caches. Of course with the first go round we were getting used to our GPS as well as the idea of geocaching. Part of geocaching is doing the whole thing somewhat discreetly. If you just go out and show off the cache as you find it someone of the general public, a muggle (a non-cacher), might see it and take it after you leave. This is known as getting muggled. With this thought in mind, there we were, a family of six, driving and walking in circles in a parking lot trying to keep up with a GPS that kept changing its mind as to which direction we needed to go. I finally determined that it might take a little bit more than a few milliseconds for the GPS to register a change in position. As we slowed our movements down we got closer to a pair of trees and viola, about head high in the one we found a plastic container.

In this cache we actually found what is called a travel bug, a type of trackable. It is basically a dog tag with something attached. In this case the originator attached a stick of pc memory. On the tag is a number that you need so that you can go on the geocaching.com site and log that you found it and where you placed it. Just remember if you take something leave something.

After our first find we sought out a cache that was about the size of eight or ten dimes stacked up. Yes they get that small. With those all you do is sign the log roll. Use very small handwriting.

We even had our first DNF, did not find, on that first trip out. After walking around in circles in a field for about twenty minutes or more we gave up. It didn't help that people started showing up at the business next door, remember discreet.

Our last of the day landed us in front of i3 Detroit, a hackerspace in the area. This was just cool! I had heard of them on MAKE Live and at Maker Faire Detroit, but had not ever taken the time to go check them out. We found the cache out front and then went in to take a tour of the space.

All in all our first impression of geocahing was great. The kids loved it and so did we. We have been out multiple times since including when we went on vacation to Virginia and DC. While we were out there I think we may have gotten my sister's family hooked as well. All the caches we found in DC were virtual caches, caches that do not have a container to find. They may be a monument or natural formation of some sort. The poster may ask you to find the answer to a few questions about the location in order to log the find, but they're still fun to find.

I could keep going forever about hiking in the woods off a creek down the road, finding a foam rotten apple with a log slip in it, or hanging out behind KFC looking through trees to find a micro cache. We've had some good times out caching. Now its your turn, go find a cache or two.... maybe three.


Don't forget to stop by Ben & Me and read about more G things.

Talk Like A Pirate Day

Ahoy, me mateys! Yest'day be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! A funny coincidence - me oldest buccaneer asked on Saturday if there be a national pirate day since he be lovin' the pirates, he do. I tell 'im that there be a Talk Like A Pirate Day, but me not knowin' when it be. Then, I check the list on Monday and find out it be yest'day. Ho! I find it funny.

Me hearties and me set sail in th' morn for a day o' adventure. We read th' pirate books. We wore th' pirate clothes. We played th' pirate games. We be real pirates, we be. 

We not be smellin' like th' pirate stench though. Or drinkin' th' pirate ale. Or actin' th' pirate ways. Got it, landlubbers? Good.

This lit'l lad  might be stinkin' at times though. It's the booty, y' know. And not th' treasure booty me talkin' about.

Aye, but we be forgivin' 'im. He be quite the beaut and provides entertainment on th' voyage.

We practiced th' Pirate Code. Th' oldest buccaneer and me plundered a copy just last weekend from th' thrifty store.

Blimey! Th' lad left Pieces of Eight - $4 worth - t' pay fer it.

I still be tryin' t' teach 'im how t' properly pillage. Aye, he be a stubborn one, that scallywag.

Shiver me timbers! We seen th' great sea monsters. They wanted me loot. 

Me mateys and me loaded the guns and "Fire in the hole!" Down went the scurvy dogs, down into Davy Jones' Locker. 

We found this 'ere map. (Here's how ye can make yer own.) We waited 'til th' Cap'n returned from 'is duties on the Barbary Coast b'fore searchin' fer th' treasure.

Th' map had a note with a clue. We hung 'em both up by th' door so th' Cap'n be seein' 'em when he get home.

Those lit'l buccaneers, they be excited to watch th' Cap'n search. Lots o' gigglin'. Lots o' smilin'.  

Ho! Th' treasure be freshly baked choc'late chip cookies! Th' Cap'n's favorites! Th' clue be handy too. Th' treasure be in a cash box "buried" under stuffed animals. The combination be "34." 

The lit'l pirates had more treasure maps for the Cap'n. He be a busy scallywag searchin' fer th' treasures. 

But he found 'em all. Aye, lots o' celebrations.

Talk Like A Pirate Day be lots o' fun! Silly talk, treasure hunts, and treasure??? Arrr, we be likin' th' day.