To most parents, an upcoming birthday party for one of their kids means at least a week of stress and anxiety. It is just like a Treasure Hunt for them. This is your kid’s most important day of the year, full of expectations, and it is only up to you to fulfill their wishes. This means inviting friends, planning activities, snacks and gifts; many time-consuming tasks for an overworked parent. Maybe the hardest task is to find ways to entertain young kids for a good two hours, without anyone getting bored or frustrated, which could be a disaster, especially when younger kids (three to eight years old) are involved. This article gives some great ideas for activities for kids of various ages.
Let the kids entertain themselves
There are several great activities, which can keep kids busy and laughing for a long time. Of course you have to fit the activity to the kids’ age group. Most of these activities are competitive games which keep several kids busy while the others watch and cheer. Here are a few examples:
Have a potato-sack-race: You know this from when you were a kid – Several kids in each heat stand inside a big sack and run back and forth.
Have an egg-race: Each kid gets a spoon and an egg and they all need to run holding the spoon with the egg laying inside the spoon without dropping it on the way. This could get messy!
Have a quiz: this can fit older kids as well, with a change of topic. Pick out the kids’ favorite topic and have a quiz. You should have small prizes to reward success.
Host a sing-along. The kids can sing along with some music to well-known songs. For older kids, you might consider turning this into a Karaoke.
Treasure hunts and scavenger hunts
One of our favorite activities for kids of all ages is a treasure hunt or scavenger hunt. In this game the kids, either in one group or several groups competing against each other, follow a trail of clues (riddles and puzzles) each pointing to the hiding location of the next clue until finally arriving at the treasure.
Treasure hunt is a very exciting game which can be played with kids of all ages and can be played either in the house, the back yard or at almost any location. This game is so great because it has more than one thrill element: the kids both need to solve riddles and puzzles and to seek the hiding locations of the next clues, and finally the treasure.
Of course the hardest part of hosting the treasure hunt is the preparation of the game. You need to think up riddles and puzzles, prepare them and to hide them before the game begins. The upside is that once treasure hunt starts, the kids can keep themselves busy for as much as an hour or even more.
A scavenger hunt is a bit easier to make. This is the simpler form of the game, in scavenger hunt there are no clues and riddles to solve, but it contains only the search part of the game. Scavenger hunt is good for very young kids who cannot solve Treasure hunt puzzles yet.
There are several websites which help you write Treasure hunt and scavenger hunt riddles and puzzles.Our favorite is Treasure hunt clues which creates various types of Treasure hunt and scavenger hunt puzzles which are very exciting and include not only riddles but also puzzles you need to cut and reassemble, puzzles you need to fold, optical illusions and such.