Treasure Hunt!!!

We were in need of a little something different. A different kind of family fun night. And so, the treasure hunt idea was planted in my head.

I made up three sets of clues for the three older kids and printed them onto different colored cardstock. Thomas' green paper held word only clues. Sarah Grace's yellow paper and Elizabeth's red paper held picture clues with the word written underneath.

Joshua and I carefully planned and placed each clue while Granny held the kids attention with a book. At the last place the clues pointed to, I planted a bag of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies.

We handed the kids their first clues, and they were off like shots! Upstairs, downstairs, outside, inside, garage, basement, deck, mailbox...they were all over the place!

After several minutes, Elizabeth came through as the first to find her treasure. She smugly opened her bag of cookies and started munching.


Sarah Grace followed moments later, quite pleased with herself, and began with her snack.


Thomas, who had twice as many clues as the girls had and no pictures, finished up a couple minutes later.


They had SO much fun and were so excited by their finds. The clues were carefully placed on the table and they have had a blast making treasure hunts for each other the past few days.

Most impressive of all, though? They each only ate one cookie, one and a half at the most, Saturday night. They saved the rest! Such self control.

Good thing I didn't put all the cookies in those little treasure baggies...it wouldn't have been very fun to explain to the kids that the reason their bags were empty the next morning was because Mommy needed cookies.