For fun (and as it is December and we need to relax a bit) we have used Excel to build treasure hunts for our kids. Normally this can be a tedious process where it takes longer to prepare all the clues than the kids take to figure them out (especially if you want it to be customised to you and your house instead of generic clues). So now you can create your own Kids Treasure hunt in less than 15 minutes!
From a MS Excel perspective, these were surprisingly hard to build (look at some of the puzzles and try build it yourself in Excel)!
How the Treasure Hunt Pages work
You can watch the video clip to see how it works (maximise the video clip in the bottom right corner), or just try it out on Treasure hunt Master
Treasure Hunt Setup Process
The easiest is to set up the whole process on the master page. So in one place you plan out where the kids will need to go too and hence what the clues need to be.
Step 1: Go to the Treasure hunt main page
Click on Treasure hunt Master . A new window will open up
Step 2: Decide on how many locations there will be, and where they are (in order)
Type in where the locations are. Keep in mind these are the clues they will need to figure out
Step 3: For each location, decide what type of puzzle is required
Decide what puzzles to use for each location. They can be the same or different, it doesn’t matter. You can see more detail on each puzzle on the puzzle types page.
Step 4: Click on each clues hyperlink and it will open a separate page with your clue entered and a reminder of where to hide this clue
Step 5: Depending on the puzzle, you may need to add a bit to the clue, but generally you just need to click on the Print button and it will print out your clue.
Step 6: Once you have all the clues printed out, use the 'Where to hide' reminder and place the clues in the appropriate locations (there will be one with the reminder being 'Hand to Players'). Don't forget to leave a 'prize' in the last location.
Step 7: Hand the starting clue to the players.
Step 8: Go relax while they run around!
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