Treasure Hunt Meals

Edith Schaeffer writes:

"When our children were small we had what I called 'Treasure Hunt Meals.' Far from being a birthday or special occasion when the announcement was made, it was usually quite the opposite, a time when I felt there was some friction, or a disappointment or sadness about something. 'Supper tonight will be a Treasure Hunt' I'd announce, and the rest of the afternoon was a time of anticipation on the part of the children. I would sit down with a pad of paper, and think- begin writing notes, then go around the house looking, and then come back and write some more. It would take a lot of planning- but it was fun trying to think of new and different ways of wording the clues and new and different places to hide them, and new and different ways to serve the meal. There would be about ten clues before the first 'treasure' was found, adn then another ten for the next course, and as many as I had time to make for the next!

Each clue, of course, tells where the next clue is to be found. The wording can be as different as your imagination will allow: in rhyme, in riddles to guess, or just simply describing the place to look. Of course, the kind of clues one leaves partly depends on the age of the children. If the children differ greatly in age, there should be 'picture clues' for the younger ones and each clue should be put in an envelope for the child, with his or her name on it. If they are about the same age one clue will do in each place.

The simplicity or elaborateness of the whole game can differ from time to time, depending on how clever you feel at the moment. It is a challenge to arrange a series with variety and unexpected endings- or with the clever blending together of jingles; or not so clever, as children are not critical, and you can constantly try new things...

There were endless varieties of meal hunts! Hunts that would take them from bush to bush outdoors in the summer time, after supper, and the 'surprise' would be a water melon; hunts that would take them to a box of bubble bath, on a hot sticky summer day; hunts that would take them to a new book, the story for that night; hunts that would take them to the bedroom where a picnic in a shoe box, decorated for each one, would give them individually served suppers that night.

-from The Hidden Art of Homemaking

Rice and Safety Pin Game

Our family always played a lot of homemade, made-up games at birthday parties growing up. One of those games, the rice and safety pin game, was such a hit that our family kept playing it for months afterward.

To play, fill a bowl with rice and mix in a good number of small-ish safety pins (making sure that all of them are closed, of course). For each person's turn, ask them to close their eyes or blindfold them while the timer is set for one minute. During that time, they must try to pick out as many safety pins as they can. It is much harder than it looks! Part of the fun comes when it is not your turn and you get to see how many pins slip through the person's fingers undetected.

Here is my husband taking yet another turn- determined that he will improve his score!

Vine-Swinging in the Woods

Because so many of the weeds and brush have died away, now is a perfect time of year to head out into the woods with your kids looking for vines to swing from.

Make sure you know what poison ivy looks like so as to avoid that, but otherwise just have fun with it! Sometimes the person swinging will discover that the vine isn't as well affixed to the tree as they thought it was and so will end up a little heap on the ground, but they won't fall from far up; so it just adds to the fun (as long as you aren't swinging over any dangerous rocks).

Great Family Fun Links!

Here are fun ideas for your family from all over the blogworld. As always, if you find (or write) other great blog entries describing creative family fun, send me an email!


Hunt for Frozen Ice Treasures

Make Marbled Paper with Shaving Cream

Download Vintage Sewing Cards and Paper Dolls

Make a Leaf Family from the Contents of a Nature Walk

Create an Alka Seltzer Film Cannister Explosion- tons of great ideas on this site!

Learn How to Play Sticker Tag- lots of great ideas on this site!

Turn a Child's Piece of Artwork into Embroidery

Have Fun Melting Crayons under a Magnifying Glass

Turn Any Shoes into Tap Shoes

Make Your Own Glow-in-the-Dark Stones

Great Ideas for Toddler Traveling Activity Bags

Create a Spider Web Maze Treasure Hunt in the Backyard

13 Ideas for Keeping Kids Occupied in the Check-Out Line

There are plenty of reasons to keep your kids busy while standing in line for the cashier. There's all that candy that's just "calling their name," the trashy magazines that you probably don't want little eyes perusing, and that propensity toward fighting tired, bored and hungry kids are famous for.

So here are some ideas:

1. The smiling game. Two people stare each other down and use all of their facial contortion comedy and creativity to make the other person smile first. (This game is usually easier to determine a winner than the staring game in which the first person to blink loses).

2. Use the time to practice times tables, spelling words, or bible verse memorization

3. Play "I spy" if you have younger kids or "20 questions" if your kids are older.

4. Come up with grocery awards with silly categories. For example if the category were "best hair" your kids might decide that a head of broccoli wins or a dust mop. Other categories might be "prettiest color," "best dressed" (for most attractive packaging), "best smile" (I can just picture a couple of kids getting a hilarious kick out of giving that award to the raw chicken drumsticks) "best at rolling down a hill," "loudest noise when you eat it." And of course, each child might want to have his own award "If I were a grocery, I would be..."

5. If your kids are older and you have a particularly long line, you might want to do a Yes/No Riddle.

6. Adults usually get tired of thumb wars really quickly, but if you made a policy that cashier lines are the only places where you will engage in them with your kids, they might learn to look forward to standing in line!

7. Before you get up close enough to see, let each person guess the first letter of cashier's name. The person whose letter is closest wins! You can let each player guess an actual name to go with their letter as well. Wouldn't they be excited if they actually guessed it on the nose one day!

8. Have a little bag of toys only for the grocery store. These can be little hand/eye coordination games like bearing ball mazes, catch the ice cream scoop on the cone, etc.

9. Do tongue twisters!

10. Play the quiet game. The person who can go longest without speaking is the winner. You would think that children would see through this one immediately as an adult ruse for peace, but its funny how many times kids will get excited about it!

11. Encourage your kids to make up a story using the objects in the grocery cart.

12. Have your kids play rocks, scissors, paper an absurdly large number of times (e.g. best out of 39) for some small prize (extra piece of gum, front seat on the way home, etc.)

13. See who can come up with the grossest sandwich idea using three different items in the cart.

What are your tricks for a stress-free grocery-line experience?

Salad Spinner Fun

I enjoy spinning lettuce in the salad spinner, don't you? It's just so fun! It seemed a shame to keep such a fun toy all to myself, so today, I let my 14-month old in on the action.

Stage 1: Spinning the empty spinner and taking off the lid. My little girl thought it was a fun sound and felt funny on her fingers when she tried to stop the bowl from spinning.

Stage 2: We filled the spinner part-way up with water. That time, when we took off the lid, we got a little shower.



Stage 3: We put rice in the bowl. This didn't really work so well. It might have worked better if we hadn't done the water first. I was hoping that the rice would spritz around in a fun way when we opened the lid. Instead it stuck to the bottom in a clump.

Stage 4: We put my daughter's little toy pig in the spinner and gave him a ride. That was fun! when we opened the lid, he went flying! (note: probably not best to open the lid with the bowl spinning too quickly if there is a little child present- it can really come out with force!)For Older Kids: We didn't do this today because my little girl is still small, but I think it would be very fun to make a game out of this. Each person could take a turn spinning the spinner as fast as he could and letting go at just the right moment. The person whose little object flew the furthest would win!

Haven't you always wanted to see your name in bread?

Wouldn't your kids be thrilled if the next time you had dinner, the rolls they were served were in the shapes of the letters of their name?

With very little effort or expense you could do just that! Or, if you want a fun afternoon craft, your kids could shape their own names. You can, of course use homemade bread dough, but if you are short on time, use store-bought frozen bread dough. Allow it to thaw and rise; cut in pieces and shape into letters. (Make sure the letter have plenty of room to rise further in the oven and still be distinguishable) Brush with egg whites if you want a nicely browned effect.

3rd Giveaway!

Hi there!

This week we are giving away a big book- all about construction trucks! Construction Zone has great, colorful pictures, and comes with 7 buttons on the side that all make different construction sounds. There are symbols in the text of the story that tell the child (or you) what buttons to push when to get an "authentic construction site experience." Looks like lots of fun!

To be entered in the giveaway, just leave a comment below. Check back late next Tuesday evening to see whose comment number was randomly selected. That person will then have 48 hours to contact me.

Have a great week!

Twice the Fun Tuesday- Dish soap bottles

Old dish soap bottles (and other squeeze bottles) can be reused as fun pool or bath-time toys for young children!

Just be sure to wash the bottles out thoroughly first. (I distinctly remember squirting the bottles into my mouth as a child).

You can go here to check out more great tips for this week.

Be sure to come back next Tuesday, October 14 (and following weeks) when I will be hosting Twice the Fun Tuesday- complete with a Mr. Linky for you to share your own ideas for reusing old objects around the house. They can be simple tips, like reusing newspaper for cleaning mirrors- or more elaborate, such as beautiful or creative crafts you've made. It will be so fun to see your creative recycling!

Map of out-of-town friends and family

If you are like our family, you have lots of friends and family that your children seldom get to see because they live far away. My latest idea for keeping our family "connected" with far-away loved-ones is this map on the wall of my baby's nursery.

The pictures I cropped and resized using our photo editor. The lettering I created by making a word document with a huge font size and going into the advanced settings for the font where I changed the font color to white and stipulated that I wanted the letters outlined. When the outlines of the letters were printed, I colored them with markers, cut them out and affixed them to the wall with poster tape.

(By the way, I am not done putting pictures on this map. If you know me and notice that your picture isn't on the wall, don't feel unloved! I probably just don't have a picture in the right format yet!)

Tree-house dumb-waiter

If your children have a tree house or a play set with a little house off the ground, I'll bet they would just love it if you gave them meal service one day with a homemade dumb-waiter.

U-Pick Farms

Isn't this a fun autumn bouquet? It's part of the big cluster of zinnias I picked- all for a dollar! My family went to a u-pick farm for my birthday yesterday where we got to pick pumpkins, and go on a hay ride, among other fun things. My favorite though was the field of zinnias. I felt like I had jumped into a painting!

U-pick farms can be an inexpensive, fun way to spend a Saturday, and right now, a lot of farms are hosting harvest festivals/ pumpkin patches. You end up with fresh produce, often cheaper than you can buy it at the stores and you have the pleasure of knowing that you are supporting a local family farm. Everybody wins!

Homemade Baby Books

Have you noticed that so many baby books are "busy?" They often have so much happening on each page that it is difficult to teach your baby individual words without his becoming confused.

Because that has always been a pet peeve of my mothers, she has made quite a few of her own, more simple, baby books. My baby loves them! Here is one that I think is particularly good. It has pictures of the objects that my baby meets in everyday life. (They are pictures from our apartment)

The corner is bent because it is loved!My baby finds this picture so convincing that she often tries to pick up the cheerios with her pincher fingers.

To make this little book, my mother covered the pages with contact paper and then used a hole punch to make holes which she reinforced with reinforcement stickers. Three little ribbons tightly tied make the book hold up very nicely! (better than some store-bought books.)

Wouldn't this make a nice, thoughtful, but inexpensive baby shower gift? You could really put your creativity to work and make some very fun books!