Children's birthday is always fun, funny and incredibly touching. For children, this is primarily a memorable entertainment. An excellent option to start the holiday will be an exciting quest - a gift search.
The essence of the game
The game quest “Find a Gift” is a series of tasks, usually logical, the implementation of which should lead to a cache where a surprise for the birthday is hidden. Usually, they’ll “pave the way” with notes - they contain information on which direction to conduct a further search, where to go in order to find a long-awaited gift. The answer to each question marks the beginning of the next round of search.
The quest should be made taking into account the age of the children. For kids, the task is simplified, and the number of tasks is reduced to 3-4, but adolescent children can complicate the task, the number of stages can be increased to 9-11 - it will be much more interesting. A child can search for a present on his own, or he can attract his friends - in this case, it is desirable that memorable gifts await all participants at the end point.
To prepare the quest, you need very little - plain paper, scissors, colored pencils, duct tape, and of course, a little imagination.
The main point in preparing the fun will be the development of the script and the careful thought out of the search route.
The best thing draw a map in advance of the house or the area where the quest will take place, and arrange all the main points for finding tips in a clockwise direction from the starting point.Thus, participants will not be able to find the gift too quickly, since it will, in fact, be hidden almost at the reference point, but the game will lead the children in the other direction.
In order to determine the required number of tips, you need to consider how much time your quest will take. The simplest solution with riddles usually takes no more than two minutes to complete one stage, so a task of 10-11 points will take about 15-20 minutes. However, you can always complicate the task by encrypting the question with the help of crosswords, anagrams or cryptography.
It is possible to turn the very receipt of a hint into sports fun, for example, a note with a question can be placed on a tree, in a piata or in an inflatable balloon - then the guys will have to spend time and ingenuity to get the coveted code.
Tasks
The following can serve as a message:
- custom note;
- message on local networks from messengers;
- an email
- card.
The tasks in the quest should be different from those offered to the child and his guests as part of the game program. They should be easier and faster to solve, since the main task of such a quest is not to assess the child’s mental abilities, but to give him maximum emotions from the process of solving the tasks.
However, it is not worth picking up too primitive clues - otherwise the children will simply be uninteresting to solve them.
It does not hurt to prepare small souvenirs at each point of the route. It can be sweets, small toys, inexpensive stationery - then finding a gift by notes will become even more pleasant and joyful.
For young children
For preschoolers, it is best to prepare such riddle questions that will directly point to one or another object in the house (or house area). For example, a riddle about a refrigerator will mean that you need to go up to it and find the following clue inside. If there is a hint about the bed, therefore, the baby will have to go up to it and find another question there. Thus, the child will get to a secret place.
For school children
Puzzles are no longer very interesting for such guys, they will show much more interest in encrypted phrases. Here are the best ideas.
- Phrases recorded back to front. In this case, the guys will have to try to figure out how to read this confusing phrase. Do not tell the children the rules - it will be much more interesting if they themselves guess.
- Words written in "invisible ink." Everyone knows that the text written in milk or lemon juice is not visible, but if you just heat it over a fire or iron it, the letters immediately appear and form words.
Keep in mind that such a hint must be given in conjunction with the heat source itself. For example, hide both the note itself and the iron in one cache, or think up a chain of tasks so that the child first finds the iron, and then the riddle. The child must understand what the decryption method should be.
- An interesting option is mirroring. Any text can be “turned over” with the help of simple computer programs, printed and hidden with the mirror itself. If the children guess to look at the reflection of what is written, then they will see the hidden word.
- You can give children a set of numbers - the point here is that each of them means a certain letter of the alphabet, or the number of the letter in some text. As in previous cases, the prompt should go along with the text on which the decryption will be conducted.
To make the treasure hunt more atmospheric, fill out the notes themselves with hints in the style of scraps of old scrolls. To do this, you need to grease the paper with a strong tea leaves, dry it, and then burn the edges - then the quest will look like a real treasure hunt.
- Themed decor is always a great success. For example, you can play pirates, Indians, superheroes - then each child needs to be given some attribute before the start of the quest, this makes immersion in the holiday atmosphere even more complete.
For older children
All teens love gadgets, and this is the reality of our day. Searching for notes may seem too childish to them - but there is no reason to despair. Today there is a huge selection of mobile platforms for creating quests. With their help, you can create an "electronic assistant" that will "lead" the search.
Usually, a quest activation code is sent to the smartphone on the smartphone, and then tasks are given for finding a hint, all guessed answers must be driven into the program, and if the answer is incorrect, the system will give a new hint. Teenagers really like such fun, and such services are quite inexpensive.
Where to hide the present?
Quests may not necessarily contain questions and answers, for the smallest players a great idea would be the footprints of large animals and a map that indicates which tracks they need to move around. For example, at first the child may have the task of following the footsteps of an elephant, then following the tracks of a dog, then you can offer to look for a hare path or run along the tracks of wild horses, which will lead to the treasured treasure.
In this case, the quest must be prepared in advance - draw or print the paw prints of animals, lay them out, confusing several paths and, of course, draw a card, hiding the present in an unexpected place.
For teens, a gift can be hidden in a cache. A good idea would be to design a safe in an old book - for this you need to cut a depression between the pages and hide the present there. Just imagine the whole gamut of feelings of a teenager when, having solved all the puzzles, he will only find a textbook on hated geometry - how surprised he will be when he opens a book and finds a brand new smartphone inside!
Alternatively, you can hide the gift in a briefcase with a combination lock, but the child himself will have to guess the code at the last prompt.
You can always organize an interesting quest on your own in an apartment without the participation of animators, the main thing is to approach his preparation creatively, taking into account the interests of boys and girls. Even if you do not have the opportunity to have a child party with friends, such a gift search will surely please him!
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