Three Counties Mum: Paperclip Treasure Hunt

DS bought home his library book from school recently, and it was Sonny's Treasure Hunt - a cute little tale about a duck that gets bored and his grandma sets up a treasure hunt for him. We enjoyed reading it, and when daddy was trying to get 10 minutes peace to watch the rugby a few days later, I thought I would set up a hunt for my two monkeys.

I googled images of pieces of furniture around our house (or things in the garden if you're doing it outside) - see my lists below for the kind of things. I chose things I was pretty sure I could find an image of on the web, then printed these out.

House: 1) rocking chair, 2) beanbag, 3) toy kettle, 4) cat basket, 5) dining table chair, etc.
Garden: 1) wheelbarrow, 2) dustbin, 3) playhouse, 4) bench, 5) seesaw, etc.

Keep the first item aside then hide the next. Using the numbers above as an example, it's like this - hide number 2 (the beanbag picture) in the number 1 space (the rocking chair); hide number 3 (the toy kettle) in the number 2 space (the beanbag), and so on. You can make it as short or as long as you like, and I made sure that the next one was as far away from the last as possible in terms of distance i.e. number 1 was upstairs, number 2 was downstairs, number 3 was upstairs...this ensure it wears them out a little running back & forth :) If you're doing it in the garden, space them out at opposite ends of the garden.

I folded up each printed picture and "secured" it with a paperclip of a different colour. This gave DD a role - she collected the paperclips that DS gave her, and ticked them off a list I made for her on a little clipboard - check boxes she could tick alongside a coloured paperclip image. They worked really well together doing this, and it was lovely to see.

I used two gold chocolate coins for the treasure at the end, which they were delighted to find!