Pirate Scavenger Hunt for Kids - Make Them Think with Riddle Clues

Pirates have always been a firm favourite for children, and the recent Pirates of the Caribbean movies has certainly increased the popularity even further. Therefore, why not play with this interest the next time that your children are bored? Perhaps one of the best ideas for a scavenger hunt for kids is an outdoor scavenger hunt with a real pirate twist. Let me walk you through a couple of ideas for running a successful scavenger hunt.

Of course, as this is going to be a pirate scavenger hunt for kids, we are going to want to run it like a ‘proper’ pirate treasure hunt. This means that you want ‘buried’ treasure at the end of the hunt. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily need to be buried, hidden is more than good enough! For a 'real' effect, why not get the children dressed up as pirates and use gold chocolate money with some costume jewelry as the prize. This makes the ideal birthday scavenger hunt for that reason. It could be a themed party!

The next step of crafting your pirate scavenger hunt for kids is coming up with the idea. If you want to run this properly, then you will want to place a lot of effort into ensuring it goes smoothly. When you are running through ideas, you will want to consider the sort of things that the child is going to enjoy. For example, they are much more likely to enjoy the hunt if the clues are ‘easy-ish’. You will be surprised at how many adults craft a scavenger hunt for kids which is simply too difficult for them to follow. There are plenty of ideas that you can grab online for your scavenger hunt. The clues are of course up to you, but this is the plan I followed when I ran a pirate scavenger hunt for a kid’s birthday party recently.

I started with a basic premise of having a pot of buried treasure at the end of the hunt. I ran the competition as a race, but I wanted to have a little something for every child that made it to the end (otherwise you end up with a lot of sad children!). I toyed with the option of giving every child a treasure map, but I decided against this. The main reason for that was the child would be able to go straight to the treasure, and there is no real fun in that! Instead, I supplied them with a clue to the first ‘clue’ on the trail. These clues then continued until they finally got to the final clue. This is where a map was located (one for each child).

On this map was the final location of the ‘buried’ treasure. The idea of this map gave it a real ‘pirate’ feel. If you want to make it seem like a real old pirate map, you could even try dabbing a tea bag on the map and letting it dry off. This gives a real antique look. Of course, if you are skilled with a flame, you could also try burning the edges and even a few holes, but please please be careful not to destroy the map or set anything else on fire!!

Hopefully this has given you a few ideas about what you can do to create the perfect pirate scavenger hunt for kids. In all honesty, children will love almost any scavenger hunt that you throw their way. You really do need to put a lot of effort into choosing the right clues for the day though! However, with fancy dress and 'real' treasure to be found on a map, you can't really plan a bad day (unless you really try to).

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