Monday, April 09, 2012

H is for How Are You Doing and Hunting

Are you still with the challenge?
Have you managed to keep up?
Are you struggling with your posts and what to write?

I seem to go in fits and starts with writing posts. When I first found the challenge I immediately came up with a few ideas of what to write with some of the letters. In fact before I had even signed up to participate I had set up my days and titled several of the posts ready to write when I had 5 minutes to spare. If I needed to get a picture taken of the subject then I had already got that sorted too.

This sort of gave me inspiration for the other posts. I am constantly thinking about what to write and whether I can make it fit into one of the letters in the month. Some are flowing easily others not quite so smoothly.
I tried, and succeeded, to not use Easter for the letter 'E'. I decided that that was too easy and was glad to see many others I checked out had not either.
I came up with 'Z' more or less as one of my first completed posts, shame I have to wait until the end to see it!
'W' was also quite an easy one to complete but 'J'and 'K' were a little harder but never fear I have something so there will be a post on the next few days (better be, don't want to get unlinked from the challenge!)

So keep going, we are all doing well nearly a third of the month completed and I am loving getting to know so many new people.

Hunt

Every year at Easter time we always do a little hunt with the boys. I have a jigsaw that has clues written on it, in fact I have 2 now, but anyway you give them the first pieces and they have to put the jigsaw together to get the place of the next clues etc.



They love doing this around the campsite where the caravan is.
However this year I was not there and I knew Steve wouldn't get up at 7am to lay it all out, just not his style!
So I told him I would organise something for Easter Sunday at home when they returned from the caravan.

 My original plan was to just do a plain simple treasure hunt.....here is the clue which leads to the next clue etc. But over the weekend I came across a sheet of paper from school where Ben had had to work out a code using numbers and alphabet.
This got me thinking and suddenly I realised that the boys were not doing a simple treasure hunt when they got home, they were going to solve codes to find the clues.
I decided that if I was spending the month of April going through the alphabet then there was no reason why they couldn't use the alphabet too.
So I wrote out the code, keeping it very basic. A = 1, B = 2, C = 3 etc
And then I had the fun of making up 8 clues each in number form for them to decipher.



When they got home and found an envelope with their name on it they were quite excited.
They happily sat at the table and worked out the clue and then raced off to find the next one.


All in all it went down very well with them, they had a lot of fun and it was so nice to see them move on to the next stage of hunting, where they had to actually do some work for each clue not just get given it.



Do you do treasure hunts with your kids?
What type do you do?
Any great ideas for future hunts?

1 comment:

Alison said...

Great idea for the hunt...the boys look very happy!
Alison xx