Archive for January, 2010
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010Hi Nikki,
We downloaded Treasure Hunt last night and are very excited to get started.
Our party is going to be Dec. 22. It is a family party. We live at the beach and our grown daughters our bring their families.
Each family will be a team. Team 1 has two kids-5 & 8, Team 2 has three kids-3,5 & 8 and team 3’s kids are 11 & 16. The parents will be the team leaders.
We are trying to come up with age appropriate clues for each. Our other challenge is one team has someone on crutches. ( this team will be hunting their clues at the park. Lots of places to sit!)
My idea is to send each team to a different location to hunt for their clues. ( the park, my sister’s big yard, the big field behind our house). All locations are within blocks of each other. Each team collects 6 clues, then they all meet back at our house to put the clues together to solve the puzzle. This will lead them to the treasure. They all dig the treasure up together and share it.
Thank you so much,
Carol Gates, USA
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010Hello Nikki,
Thanks for the e-mails and suggestions. I have enjoyed your treasure hunt ideas and games and gave them a try at my daughters birthday party. She is 9 and the girls had a ball. We had a backwards party and it was definately the hit of the party. I also run a kids program at a guest ranch in Colorado and look forward to using many of your ideas with them. I have done many "on skis" treasure hunts and look forward to incoporating many of your ideas with my own outdoor twists. It is a nice way to spark new ideas as well as using the ones you provided.
Thank you for the follow up!
Kelli, Colorado, USA
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010Hi Nikki!
Our treasure hunts were lots of fun! We modified the plan for our daughter to have a treasure hunt based on a Nancy Drew theme. I renamed the stations with titles for Nancy Drew Mysteries and named the teams different desserts based on the Nancy Drew movie that came out last summer. We used your party idea for developing two person teams by letting them pick and shoe andshoestring, spoon and fork, etc. All of the girls ages 10-11 seemed to really enjoy all of what we did. They were even very excited to find the treasure under our porch at twilight which our son had hidden. We also used some of your ideas for our son’s party. He had an Indiana Jones themed party and only three friends so we really couldn’t form teams, we just let them move through kind of an obstacle hunt to find their treasure.
Thank you for all of your great ideas! They really helped to make our children’s parties an exciting success!
Most grateful,
Amy Brown, North Carolina, USA
Monday, January 4th, 2010Nikki - You are patience personified. Thank you for your excellent customer service. I will download now. Hooray!
Martha Wiedersheim, New York, USA
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010Nikki,
I am honestly amazed at your follow-up emails. You’re too good to be true. After reading your email, you hit the nail right on the head. What you described is exactly the kind of activity that I’ve been trying to plan!! I was so excited that I went back and googled the Treasure Hunt Party Game and purchased the booklets.
I think you’re fabulous and as a working mother who has little time to plan party events - my heartfelt thanks goes out to you.
Mercedes Stobbie, USA
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010Hi Nikki,
We downloaded Treasure Hunt last night and are very excited to get started.
Our party is going to be Dec. 22. It is a family party. We live at the beach and our grown daughters our bring their families.
Each family will be a team. Team 1 has two kids-5 & 8, Team 2 has three kids-3,5 & 8 and team 3’s kids are 11 & 16. The parents will be the team leaders.
We are trying to come up with age appropriate clues for each. Our other challenge is one team has someone on crutches. ( this team will be hunting their clues at the park. Lots of places to sit!)
My idea is to send each team to a different location to hunt for their clues. ( the park, my sister’s big yard, the big field behind our house). All locations are within blocks of each other. Each team collects 6 clues, then they all meet back at our house to put the clues together to solve the puzzle. This will lead them to the treasure. They all dig the treasure up together and share it.
Thank you so much,
Carol Gates, USA
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010Hi Nikki:
Thanks for your help. I am responsible for a treasure hunt as a family activity for a country club. One Friday every month we have family fun night. I would like to include ages of all. We will have to have the hunt inside. I was thinking about making written clues with keys at the location. They take a key and at the last clue is the treasure box with a lock on it and they try their keys. Only one key will work. Or I could have multiple treasure boxes so more than one family win.
Thanks again
Cathy Nemec, Ohio, USA
Saturday, January 2nd, 2010Thank you Nikki,
We just got back from our Church Harvest Festival, and everyone had a great time. They were running around enjoying themselves, and I got a lot of compliments on the Treasure Hunt. I modified the game for our needs, but we generally followed your guidelines. Thank you for your help and inspiration in making our outing a great time.
Blessings,
Rebecca Walsh, USA
Friday, January 1st, 2010Dear Nikki:
I’ve downloaded the planner and at first glance, it looks like there are lots of ideas that will work for our event after I tailor them to our needs.
Every July our church puts on a camp called, ‘Summer Hummer’. Ages 4- 5 stay only half a day, and each day I need to develop a new treasure hunt because the same children repeat the activities every day.
Ages 6 to 14 stay all day and the treasure hunt will be an activity the age groups participate in once. The groups are divided up, such as: ages 6-7 is one group, ages 8-9 is another, etc. All together there will be close to 900 kids! Wow, that takes my breath away. It’s really a blast, kids have a ball and so do the counselors. About 300 counselors participate. There’s craft people, snack people, story tellers, water slides, zip lines, luge racers, all sorts of field games: soccer, races, etc.
A theme is established by a company called Gospel Lights where we purchase the course. This year’s course is ‘Sonforce Kids’. During the week we emphasize a different element of the course. Monday is Trust, based on Exodus 1-2:10: Moses: Boy in a basket.
Tuesday is Unite, based on Esther 2-8: Esther: Queen at risk. Wednesday is Train, based on Daniel 1: Daniel: Servant of God. Thursday is Follow, based on Jeremiah 36-39: Jeremiah: Prophet in trouble. Friday is Lead, based on Numbers 13-14:9: Joshua: Spy in a strange land.
The setting is on a space station full of adventure and high drama leading the children to make good decisions based on the day’s Bible stories. I’m going to attempt to fashion clues and puzzles with a space theme.
I’ll have some help during the treasure hunt itself, but it will be up to me to figure out all the details and logistics of the hunt. It should be great! Thanks for all you do, you’ve given me some confidence and the beginning of some ideas to pull this off. I’ll keep you posted.
Regards,
Patty Pynch, Washington USA
Friday, January 1st, 2010Thank you Nikki,
We just got back from our Church Harvest Festival, and everyone had a great time. They were running around enjoying themselves, and I got a lot of compliments on the Treasure Hunt. I modified the game for our needs, but we generally followed your guidelines. Thank you for your help and inspiration in making our outing a great time.
Blessings,
Rebecca Walsh, USA