Submitted by pinheadbrigade t3_zuoav7 in LifeProTips
My kids start with a stocking riddle and it leads them to the next clue hidden in the house and possibly a present. I've been doing this for a few years now and they look forward to the hunt more than the gifts. Thankfully I'm in a much better place financially, but its so much fun for them they ask me to do it every year.
Happy holidays everyone!
"C'mon dad, where are our presents? It's been 3 hours."
Me: "Take a look around you. This IS the present."
You are ready.
“I’ve given you the gift of life” was a personal favorite of mine growing up.
First clue leads to a light switch.. Second, the kitchen faucet...
#OOP
BE the present, I like that
Be the present by being present.
English is so fun.
It's a present to be present in the present.
They should be upvoting his comment, not mine
"uh.... Yeah. That's totally what I was going for."
Presence over presents
Do I remember a single toy or gift I got as a child at family Christmas? Not one bit. What I do remember back then is spending all day getting to play Scrabble and UNO and other games with my aunts and uncles.
I think I got scrabble and uno for christmas.
I remember most of the consoles and stuff my brother and I got. But the real good and more vivid memories of those consoles were the one or two times we would all sit around playing them together. From Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES to Bubble Bobble on ps2 to Wii sports on the wii.
Great times, great memories
When I was a kid, my family would hide our birthday presents. I loved hunting for them even more than the presents themselves!
This year my Dad put my gift card in a puzzle box, and even as an adult I still had more fun with that than I will with the gift card haha
That is a great observation.
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I did this for my kids at Easter for about 5 years, as they reached their pre-teen years and aged out of the public egg "hunts", up until they were 16 or so. One clue leading to the next and the next and the next... The kids got an adventure and I got to share some of my creative writing with them. They got the chance to see how my mind works and more of my humor as they figured out the clues.
Started out with clues in the house and on our property the first couple years. Then moved on to the neighborhood at large and doing it with friends. The last year was at a beach vacation cabin. Had them running all through town tracking down clues taped to the backs of street signs, under logs, in a hidden ammo can, etc. Pretty sure they ran/walked 4+ miles the last year.
My mom did this for every birthday growing up. It was our birthday “hunt”. We had clues tramped all over the house and yard until we finally arrived at our presents.
I couldn’t tell you a single gift I got as a child but I remember the hunts
Mine did it for Easter! She hid our baskets and wrote these really incredible rhyming clues. Absolutely loved it
My mom did this too!! Its been such a blast to carry on the tradition.
So did mine! But instead of clues there was a string and I had to follow it all over the house, outside, back in the house, back outside until I found the basket. Me, my sister, and cousins all loved that
Love doing this for Easter. Last year my 8 year old found an egg different from the rest hidden in the backyard, with a rhyming clue that led to eight other similar eggs, with the rhyming slips rolled up in a set of cheap but pretty jeweled rings. The final egg was a golden one the size of a grapefruit buried in our sandbox that had led light strips for my daughters room. I regret the blinding light show every night before bed, but she’s still talking about the egg hunt that rabbit sent her on.
I used to do this for Easter baskets, too! Probably not all rhyming but definitely tried to make it interesting!
And you know, you don't even have to be a kid to enjoy these things! My family has always been about stretching out Christmas gift opening, and as everyone got older and the general number of gifts dwindled (at least, from when we were kids and would have like 10-15 little-medium toys and one or two "big" gifts) down to a handful of nice things each, we needed something that went beyond one-at-a-time gift opening as a group and started this despite the "kids" being in our 20s at the time. My mom handled all of the clues for the first few years, but then in the last two my siblings and I have started stepping up to do it ourselves and put our own creative spins on it (this year was my year, so I wrote a song that set up a story about an evil elf that escaped from the north pole and stole a bunch of our presents and continued that narrative in longer-form rhyming clues than we normally do).
Like, two of us are already in our 30s with the youngest not far behind, none of us have kids, and we still look forward to it every year. Also helps that once the gifts are found and gathered, we break for mimosas/bloody marys and breakfast before getting into the actual opening. It's just fun to have a Christmas morning that lasts a few hours rather than 5 minutes when people are just tearing into things on their own.
Treasure Hunts are the best! Good on you for doing one (or many) I'm 56 and my dad used to do them for us kids, and my kids, short, a few clues. Then I started, by doing them on a word doc with the location of the clue at the bottom in smaller print (think 12 "cards" on a page). 2 pages yields 24 clues, just long enough if you are creative. I sit and type it all out, since I, like most people, know my own home very well. Some clues are harder, some easier. "This clue is in a very tight spot" (vice in my workshop). My wife loved them as much if not more than the kids. Now I just make the odd one for her. It's the chase / solving the riddles she loves. Did a 24 clue hunt for Christmas for tomorrow for her, end clue is in a ziplock, inside a water bottle (full), frozen at the bottom of the freezer. So when she does get the last clue / gift (travel voucher), it'll take more time to get it out of that bottle. Heh heh. When placing the clues, I group them by location in the house, so I don't have to do as many trips up and down the stairs like she will have to. With the kids, if an Easter hunt I had them going to the mailbox 6-7 houses down the street and the final clue/gift was buried in a container in the sandbox 3 feet down. Left a couple shovels by the fence. Fond memories for sure. As they get older but before they lose interest, the clues can get more challenging. Takes a couple hours to do a good one to set it up. Cheers to my dad for him starting this tradition. (I even hide thank you notes when visiting ma and pa) Merry Christmas all.
^ this dude treasure hunts!
If things are really bad, don't be too proud to use Toys for Tots.
That is what the program is for. Every kid deserves to have good memories of the holidays.
such a beautiful idea, and i love seeing videos of people getting stuff for their tots!
Most cities should have some kind of charity thing, especially for christmas. I know my city has Santas Anonymous to help less fortunate families. Use them if you need to, especially when you have small children! Dont be embarrassed, and when things get better you can volunteer to help give back!
Or you can even use the charity and volunteer the same year if you feel embarassed or ashamed for needing to use them
Head on over to r/constructedAdventures for ideas and Inspiration.
It’s a community dedicated toward teaching and inspiring others to build treasure hunts!
Thanks!
Thanks for this, I do something like this every Easter but it's a challenge coming up with ideas every time!
Oh man you have come to the right place! Glad to have you join the community!
Little Free Libraries are a great place to pick up books for your kids. I always fill ours with extra books and some toys the week of Christmas just in case.
You are so kind, this is wholesome af 🥹
I also wrap stocking staffers. I use tissue paper. It prolongs the unwrapping and makes everything a bit more gift like.
We've bought an "end of the roll" roll of newspaper from our local newspaper (the roll is too small to use for another issue but has plenty left on there) for like 30-50 bucks. It's a couple of feet wide and is thin white/gray paper. We often unroll a stretch on the floor and let the kids paint on it. At Christmas time, we then use that for wrapping (for anything not from Santa), especially for gifts going to grandparents etc. We've had that roll for years, gets used year-round and it feels like we've barely made a dent. Just if you want something other than tissue paper.
Love this idea THANK YOU
I did this with my kids one year and not to pad it out but for extra fun. They LOVED it!
great idea. Thanks for sharing
Treasure Hunts are awesome and we really should do them more.
My parents never did it for a birthday, but they did do it for Halloween in 2001 after 9/11. They succumbed to the “someone is going to poison my child’s candy” fear and wouldn’t let us trick-or-treat that year, so instead they did a treasure hunt for us, with our candy hidden at the end. Each clue lead to one of the magnetic letters we had around the house and once we had them all it spelled the location of the candy, which ended up being the sandbox. We actually had to dig our candy out of the sand like real treasure! Hahaha. (Don’t worry, mom put it in ziploc bags first!).
As much as their reasoning might’ve been a little strange, the treasure hunt was incredibly fun and despite missing trick or treating, we all honestly felt we had a lot more fun doing that. My parents hid stuff outside, we had to walk down the road to visit our grandma for clues, and overall they just did a really good job.
Any event can be made into a treasure hunt!
The memories and the magic are what they will remember, not the actual items. This is such a wonderful way to keep the magic flowing.
They will forget about the presents when they're older but those treasure hunt memories will last a lifetime and maybe even become a tradition. Genius.Thanks for sharing.
I appreciate this so much, just got done making the scavenger list because of this post. Christmas is tight this year and our year has been incredibly rough as a family. Hopefully they remember this for Christmas thank you OP
My parents did something similar to this with me and my siblings for christmas, and I think i'll do it with my kids later in life. It makes christmas a lot more memorable, and is still some of my best memories.
my parents did this for us when I was growing up and I loved every minute of it. I still remember racing to get to my present before my sister found hers. It was great.
My parents also did this. I did it for my kids. And then as they became young adults they surprised me and gave me my own hunt again. Def brings back the magic. I know they’ll do it for their kids as well.
There's also a million toy and bike drives every year
This might be one of the best lpt I've seen in here. Well done!
Like 3hrs before Xmas. Nice tip hahaha.
I did this for my husband this year because he wants something technical that has options, and I don’t know what options are the right ones to get for his setup. So the kids and I came up with clues for things around the house whose first letters spell out the thing he wants. Seemed like more fun than just wrapping up a piece of paper with the name of the stuff he wants on it.
Thank you for the great advice, hurting for money or not I agree with the comments below. The memories are the experience!
I hope those that are hurting find some relief soon.
I used to do this for my daughter. She was an only child, and it seemed more fun than just opening everything in 5 minutes lol.
I red this tip this morning at 8:15, had to leave to do presents at 8:40 and turned part of my nephews presents into a six clue scavenger hunt and it was so fun!!
I still do this with close friends, though in a scaled down way. Even years later, we may not remember the gift itself but the memory of the experience really sticks and it makes a great shared story to recall.
I HIGHLY suggest guessing gifts as well.
My family does these. Wrap an item in several layers of wrapping paper. The item has to be out of it's packaging. Everyone takes turns guessing what the item might be and whoever gets it right can keep it. The "unwrapping" process of a single gift can be as much as 30 minutes of guessing and laughs. We allow for everyone to ask yes or no questions to narrow down the answer.
My dad did this and I wished I would have kept them. I sort of remember the limerick/ poem about my Nike Air Max's, it was all about me. I was kind of embarrassed but now realize he really loved me so much or he wouldn't have known all that stuff and put the time into writing it down and being so creative.
For birthdays we do a "magic present box" in which things randomly appear throughout the day but only when not looking at it. Means each thing gets time to be played with and can open presents from relatives while in a call with them rather than a flurry of wrapping paper
This! I remember the hunt and some of the silly clues but I never remember the present. It’s about the experience!! I can see my mom’s cursive on the clues, her hand drawn duck, the smiley face. I remember the presents being wrapped in cereal or oatmeal boxes and the bags shoved in the cabinet. The gifts never mattered.
My friend does something similar for her son's "big" gift every year. He absolutely loves it. When he found out this year won't be quite as good as previous years, he said he still hoped they could play that game because it's the best game ever.
I love and have have done this for years now. When I first divorced I was broke and could only afford a couple gifts for her Xmas and bday. She loved running around trying to hunt her presents down that I kept up the practice. Now anytime I have a gift, she immediately starts running around the house. I hope she keep the tradition up when she's a parent.
Can confirm, my mom did this 30 years ago. Classic move.
I did this just now. Thanks!!!
My marriage proposal was in the form of a treasure hunt! This is our 19th xmas together. 🎄
I come from a large family, 8 children. One year money was evidently very short. We got a few small gifts on Christmas. A week later, after everything went on sale, we were woken up early with the call to "second Christmas". Our parents gave us lots of gifts just a little late. It became the favorite Christmas because we had 2 that year, and got lots of toys. It wasn't until we were adults that we learned about the real reason for second Christmas. It didn't tarnish the great childhood memory of the year we had 2 Christmases, in fact reinforced the love our parents felt.
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Would love for you to share some riddles!
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Ok I’m gonna do that no matter what once she can read….
This sounds fun! Even if you could only afford dollar store stuff you could make that super fun
I love this idea! For so many, esp these past couple of years, times have been extraordinarily difficult so creating an amazing holiday experience such as this will make even the most lean of times special and memorable. Great idea, OP! 🤗
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What a wonderful tradition.
Safe, Happy Holydays!!
or build a trebuchet out of a discarded pallet, endless fun.
This is a really cool suggestion.
Or just teach them that presents don’t matter. And not to feel pressure and guilt as a parent to give them expensive things at Christmas. Just give them your love, time and attention.
My parents used to do this and it was always fun!
This might work for very young kids.
I don't fondly remember the Christmas where I was forced to run all around the house finding clues and having to kiss certain family members for the next step, only to find that I already had the same gift I was hunting.
Maybe the lesson here is if you do the scavenger hunt don't hype up one gift the whole time, and don't force affection on kids and/or bargain for theirs.
40 years ago my grandparents did this for my Barbie Dream house probably because they didn’t want to wrap it. But I still remember getting to go on the hunt for my gift. Creates great memories.
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We do this too cause I loved my treasure hunts as a kid. I don't remember the gifts I got but I do remember how much fun it was with all clues.
i dont remember most of the gifts i recieved as a child tbh, but i do remember that my mom would always say they were from random celebrities/characters that were vaguely related to whatever the gift was. so when my brothers got new shoes it would be from “michael jordan”. i got a diary one year addressed to me from greg heffley lol.
I'm not a mom or planning to become one, so I can't really put myself in those shoes, but I can clearly imagine my parents doing it once or twice and then half-assing it and then giving up altogether. I have no doubts that's how it would have ended up and I'm glad it never even started.
Where I'm getting at us, if you're going to disappoint your kids with "oh I'm tired because I'm hosting" "oh I'm tired from work", please ignore this LPT.
We were so poor, it was "the underwear you're wearing for next year is your present".
My parents did this! Favorite memory was searching for what turned out to be a new bike. Loved both the search and the bike.
One of the only things my nephew fondly remembers with detail was the time I bought a small chest and put chocolate coins in and drew a map to it in the forest. Makes me wish I would have done more things like this and less to $50-$75 amusement parks🤣.
My mom used to do this for me on Easter to find my Easter basket and it's one of my greatest memories as a kid
Don't give the best gift, give the best memory
Did this with my kids for many years because my parents did it ...big family and they were frugal...other bit of advice don't wait until late PM Christmas Eve to devise, you will be hard pressed to complete and mightt forget where u hid some presents..
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I love this idea, I just wish I seen it sooner so I could have done it this year.
****Happy Holidays Everyone****
It’s not just kids. One year my aunt could not afford presents and drew everyone an ornament on paper, framed by sticks to hold their shape. Decades later my mom still has hers, goes on the tree every year. The gift that keeps on giving.
Where do I get the kids though?
Also don't be afraid to buy say a toy like playdough that may come with more than one colour and open the pack and give each kid there own colour playdough separately instead of a together gift. Also depending on what your budget is dollar store toys are being made a little better now, at least my local ones are.
My Grandma did this one year for us grandkids on Christmas Eve. It was so much fun. We got antique train cases - I now keep my most precious items in it, including some of the papers that had clues on it. She also in subsequent years would give us all riddles and whoever got the answer first won a small prize - mine was a box of cheap ornaments that I will never get rid of. I was privileged and we were not hurting for money, but those experiences will always stand out the most to me.
This is a cool idea, but depends on the person. If you do this it will increase the hype and if you give something which doesn't fulfil it it can turn out odd for the kid.
This is amazing. Thank you.
This is an amazing idea!
My LPT for holiday budgeting is to save all my loyalty points (PC Optimum in Canada) to use when they are increased in value on certain weekends leading up to Christmas. Either I use the points to buy the gifts themselves or I use the points to buy groceries and the grocery money to buy gifts.
I’ve managed to give my kids a Nintendo Switch, PS4 and 2 tablets over the years by doing this religiously! Most years I can save $400-$500 worth of points, which goes a LONG away in the Christmas budget.
I recognize that I have been incredibly privileged to have been able to do this. I once had a friend remark that she couldn’t understand how I always had all this money for toys and stuff. I explained how little cash I actually spend on all of it, and it blew her mind!
Christmas is not worth going into debt over. Kids will love gifts from the Dollar Store as much as they love the expensive stuff!
I write gift tags with silly dad jokes and bad puns as clues, youngest distributes and reads, and everybody tries to guess what it is (recipient first, of course)
Love the dad joke angle!
But Dad!!! You made me go through all this work for a pencil? :(
I immediately liked this post because my best memories were not the presents itself but realizing how much time and effort my mom put in for our presents growing up!
Love doing this with the little ones, its really fun for everyone tbh
Love the reminder 😄
My aunt and uncle did something similar for me and my cousins once we reached an old enough age that we just got money or a gift card but still young enough to actually get a gift. We all had a puzzle that we had to solve before we could get our gift. Usually it was a puzzle game/brain teaser type thing but the worst was one year my cousin had to piece together a letter that went through a paper shredder haha.
My brother and I were into Blue’s Clues as kids and so our parents set us up with our own Blue’s Clues to find our presents! I got pink paw prints, my brother got blue, and we had a lot of fun playing it! I still remember that fondly 20+ years later!
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I did this! My kids are adults now and they still want me to do this. They LOVED it!!
My parents would do this for Easter with our Easter baskets.
This will give better memories than any thing. I did this for our sons Easters. 30yrs later they are some of his favorite memories
And always remember that we still have billionaires - a lot of billionaires. Ask yourself, why you have to worry while others life in such wealth. Do they really are more deserving?
Kinda wish you’d mentioned this marvellous idea before my kids were in their 50’s. Bravo! I’ll be ready for the great-grands!
If you make it so hard that they can't find the gifts, you can return them for $$$.
During COVID, we did this for Halloween instead of trick or treating. Was a total hit!
It is a great idea to implement regardless of your situation.
The best gift to give at Christmas is good memories, with traditions filled with fun and love. Far better than transitory gifts and they last a lifetime
We used to do this sometimes, with a chain of clues, each leading to the next and the present at the end. My older brother - 15 or so at the time - decided to make the Ultimate Treasure Hunt for our dad, with clues all over the house, attic to basement, inside and outside, 200 yards into the woods, 500 yards down the street to the little park, etc. Some of the clues were intentionally difficult to open - I remember one being buried at the bottom of the flour canister and another sealed in a plastic bag and submerged in a bottle of used motor oil. The present at the end of the chain was something intentionally stupid, too - a broken tool or a burned-out light bulb or something, with a weak joke attached. Ruined it for everyone. Pro tip - don't do that. 🤦♂️
Do this even if you have money. My mom did this for my brother and I went I was like 5 and it one of my most memorable Christmases.
Oh like branding these days
Or just… be direct with them? Kids appreciate honest and direct communication, all the research shows this
Brilliant. To add to this, tell them if they don't find the presents they won't get Christmas dinner but they won't know there aren't any presents to find this way you don't have to spend money on dinner.
Im literally hurting for money in general
Also, gift experiences! Going to the woods with your child, teaching them how to knit, helping them redecorate their room (move furniture around, etc) are gifts many kids will remember for a long time, especially if you have to work long hours your time is the best gift you can give them.
Think simple. We had some new toys in my classroom for Christmas (first/second grade), the things they spent the most time with was a big cardboard box, pencils and the back of old assignments and the wooden building blocks we have. Building blocks can be expensive, but clean, saved garbage and material scraps, some pens, tape and scissors make for a great time tinkering and building that many kids love. You can try asking shops that sell big appliances for boxes (they usually want to get rid of them and want to give them away for free) as well.
Theres also organizations that help to get children Christmas and birthday gifts, don't be ashamed of asking them for help. They exist so kids can get the gifts they want, and they're usually glad to help even if you don't qualify for their specific organization.
And a shitty life pro tip of this is giving impossibly hard clues and when they can't find it you tell them it's whatever expensive gift they wished for but they gotta find it themselves. Fun for the whole year!
This advice came too late
Yea this sounds terrible
My kids disagree, sorry you feel that way.
It's ok for kids to lie to their parents to save their feelings. So no worries.
Definitely, you're an adult. You can make Christmas special by budgeting through the year and still give them a good Xmas. Without the need for a treasure hunt. What a shitty LPT
Do it like Hal in Malcolm in the Middle lol
Can confirm this works - I once had a treasure hunt using our Amazon Alexa dots - all bought cheaply on sales, and one in each room. My son would start in the living room, ask Alexa a keyword phrase to start, then the dot will give him a new clue and a room to take the answer to. He’d go to the next room, say, “alexa, the answer is xyz”, and if he got it right (and to the right dot), the dot would recognise it and give the next clue.
About 10 clues later he got a reward - good fun that doesn’t take huge amounts of money, and many households have a fair few alexa things kicking about by now.
When you're 80 and you leave your will, have it be a riddle. Make it a reality show, fund it, and give all the proceeds to your kids
If you're hurting this year for money... don't have kids when you are irresponsible and can't afford them in the first place!
I mean it's true... it just shows more how irresponsible people are... yes let's have kids when we can only afford an apartment... rich people should only have kids not poor people
Yes continue the time honored tradition of making the poor work for their gifts while the well off kids get handouts for free
With all that abundant free time that poor parents have . . .
Better tip: Rob a church.
Post on r/Wallstreetbets
In other words make them work hard for gifts they won’t like.
This would’ve been good advice if Christmas hadn’t happened already.
I know it says this Christmas, but there are ~others~ you can use it on 😱
It will only hype up your shitty gifts maybe
Sounds terrible tbh
But kids will enjoy the adventure…besides if they dont get lots of toys, the adventure of finding them makes up for it
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It’s definitely a good idea but I can’t help but think of some little shit head saying after the hunt “all that for this?”
That would hurt my feelings as a parent lol
Yea, just the act that something unusual is being done will put them on alert. And they will notice the presents are weak. That's not something a child will forget to notice. This tip is like saying, "If you're an employer short changing your employee, you should chat with them as you hand them their check to stretch it out for time."
jnmann t1_j1kmidk wrote
Kids remember experiences more than the material things, the real pro tip is be present in your kids life