For three years running now I’ve been making Mia a scavenger hunt for her birthday to lead her to one of her presents. I thought this year I’d actually show it off.
Each clue is in an envelope marked with a number and a letter. We’ll come back to why later. The first clue, as always, is sitting and waiting on the kitchen table. There are eight envelopes for her eighth birthday. I’ll probably break that pattern some time before her 18th birthday.
The clues are mostly written on pieces of green paper. Because we had a bunch of green typing paper.
The first clue just says “fold me” in the middle, with some hopefully-unreadable lines written on the top and bottom reverse side.
Fold it just right, and you get this. She got this without any assistance! Off to a great start!
The second clue is written backwards, and requires the use of a mirror to read.
She hit her first snag here. She kept trying to figure out what it said without using a mirror. I realize that the idea of “mirrors make things backwards” might not be the first thing that comes to mind when a kid sees backwards writing. And the clue is solvable without one, just harder. Mommy might have given her a little guidance to take the clue to the bathroom.
The third clue didn’t work out well. My goal was to just tell her “try saying it really fast.” I was trying to point her to “Dresser drawer in your bedroom.” She figured out “bedroom” instantly and “dresser” not long after, but didn’t really put it together. Also, I’m not sure she realized the big fixture in her room is a “dresser.” I need to make sure I confirm her vocabulary before designing these.
The fourth envelope just contained a single Trader Joe’s Chocolate Cat Cookie (for people)™. The goal was to guide her to the pantry. This mostly worked, but we just moved to a new house and it turns out she had no idea where the nonperishable food was stored. Apparently she thought I was sourcing her Chocolate Cat Cookies (for people)™ from the refrigerator.
Oops. We had to guide her straight to the pantry door.
Clue number five was, I must admit, too obtuse.
I had to tell her that LINUX is a kind of computer (shush), which was enough to get her looking in the office.
The goal being to find the matching bumper sticker on my desk. With a little pointing, she figured it out.
This clue envelope contained a single Uno card. She got this right away, it was pointing her to the board games shelf.
It took, however, a surprising amount of time for her to find the actual envelope.
In general, I’ve been trying to frame these puzzles as a way of emphasizing the extraordinary progress she’s made in school the past couple of years. The 6th birthday treasure hunt was a lot of pictures, but this one had more actual reading involved. With the penultimate clue, I really leaned into it, because now she can do basic arithmetic!
She crushed it. Decoded, it spells “BEANBAG,” a clear direction to the bean bag chair she sits on in front of the TV.
The final clue was just the numbers 1 through 8, written in circles the same way they appear on the envelopes. This was a new gimmick: the envelopes as part of the final clue. But, this was too vague. She never had to keep track of the envelopes before, and her first instinct was to discard them. This goes to a consistent issue she had with the game; she wanted to move fast, but the game was forcing her to slow down. Perhaps a present is too strong of a motivator. It was actually causing her visible anxiety to stop and re-order the envelopes numerically to get the clue.
She did, however. The letters spell out “WASHDISH,” leading her to the dishwasher for the actual present. I spelled it that way because I was worried that if I spelled it “DISHWASH,” she’d 1) figure out the letters were spelling a word, 2) find 4 envelopes, 3) realize they spelled DISH, and 4) go straight for the dishwasher and bypass half the game. This was over-thought; as I mentioned, she didn’t even get past #1. But I still think it was worth it.
The ultimate reward for this tireless treasure hunt was: a build-it-yourself robot toy! Which apparently wasn’t exactly at the top of her wish list.
Parenthood. You win some, you lose some.
Lucky, lucky child.