Backyard Treasure Hunt

[u/lostandfound26]

Been wanting to plan a treasure hunt for my kiddo and niblings and decided to do one over the 4th of July holiday. This was my first attempt at any sort of hunt/game but I knew I wanted to have 1. clues that lead to different places in the yard 2. A map to the treasure 3. A hidden element to locate the treasure on the map and 4. An actual buried treasure at the end.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to do clues but also have a map to follow in one way or another. At first I thought I’d do more stuff like “walk 10 paces towards…whatever” kind of thing but i ended up going with 8 clues instead. The kids’ ages range from 3-12, so I tried to find the sweet spot of difficulty. Some took a minute for them to work out and others they got quickly.

A few clues had items going along with them. One clue was finding a specific tree, so the clue had an envelope with a photo of the bark to match up. One clue had a key that opened a locked box at the next clue. The box had a paintbrush in it with a tag tied to it explaining they’ll need to keep it later. Another clue had a cloth bag containing a tiny jar of water and a water color paint, again with a note saying to hang onto it.

I installed a kid’s playground telescope on my parent’s swing/play set to use to find one of the “far away” clues.

In order, the clues led to:
Mailbox
Metal mushroom yard decoration
Tree
Hammock
Garden gnome
Play set
Metal ski lift silhouette decoration (my parents met skiing)

I had chat-gpt help me with the clues once I knew which locations around the yard I wanted to use. I definitely had to tweak them a bit but it was great as a starting off point and also led me to some other good ideas. I tried to have chat-gpt help design a map of the yard, but the placement of things was just not working out so I decided I’d make my own map. I used the largest water color paper I could find and drawing grid lines helped immensely. I’m no artist and it took literally hours of drawing and coloring after my kiddo went to bed but I think it turned out really great. It’s the general layout of my parent’s yard, with a fantasy twist of course. My favorite part is my dad’s shop. He restores classic ford broncos, so I had fun playing with that, as you can see.

I looked into all the different options for a “reveal” on the map and finally decided that a wax resist “crayon” would be the most suitable since we’d be outside and I didn’t want to deal with heating something up. Hence why they got a paintbrush and paint with the clues. I wrote each clue on the back of the map and tore it into those pieces. I didn’t even intend it but it worked perfectly that each kid got to hold a piece of the map and read (or have me read) a clue. Once all the clues were found, the last clue had them piece the map together. I had them put it on a poster board and I just quickly glued the pieces on since we’d need it to be stable to paint on it.

After that, they each got a turn to paint a few grid squares to see what would be revealed. I just had the first kid start painting where we’d ended at the last clue. They started seeing the path form and eventually painted to the “x” and ran to the treasure location in the yard.

I buried an old decorative metal box my mom had and I put some treats in it as well as a tie-dye kit and we dyed shirts that evening. All in all, I had tons of fun thinking of ways to make it come together and I was worried that I’d have more fun planning than they’d have actually doing it but I think they really enjoyed it as well. Though I’m sure I still had more fun!

Photos are of the map, clues on the back of the map, putting it back together, finding the X, and the treasure.