UPDATE May 2022: MORE RECENT Easter Egg & Treasure Hunts are available @ our sister-site www.EpicTreasureHunts.com.
There are also some resources there to assist you in making your own treasure or Easter egg hunt. Please check it out!
Every Easter (for at least the last 4 or 5 years) I have done an Easter egg & treasure hunt for the kids. Some years their cousins from Philly are up – and they participate too. Other years – it is just our kids. It has kind of taken on it’s own life – and grown over the years. My intention is to keep doing the hunt – and making the puzzles a little more sophisticated and challenging every year.
This year I excluded Melani from the planning part – so she could play right along with kids! It usually takes me hours upon hours to put things together – but it is worth it with how many fond memories and fun everyone has with this annual tradition!
So feel free to use this – in whole or part – for a for your own hunt if you would like to do so. Obviously – some things might need to be tweaked to accommodate your particular circumstances.
Instructions
Here are the instructions I read to the kids before every hunt:
Welcome to Chip’s 2019 Epic Easter Egg & Treasure Hunt!
This year you will be searching for Easter eggs in two (2) different locations. The first (1st) location will be the Williamson’s House, the second (2nd) will be the Saint Joseph’s Grotto. In each location you will each find 10 Easter eggs.
Easter Eggs will be COLOR CODED and have your initial on it!!! ONLY PICK UP EGGS WITH YOUR COLOR &/or INITIAL!!!! Please DO NOT help your siblings UNLESS THEY ASK FOR YOUR HELP!
IN ADDITION to the 10 Easter Eggs each of you will find @ each location – there will be 2 GOLDEN Easter Eggs that have NO INITIALS on them. One GOLDEN egg is for Annie to find since she is the only one that wrote a note to the Easter Bunny and she has a very special relationship to all bunnies! The OTHER GOLDEN Easter Egg is for Sophie to find – since she is the youngest. These will be a CRUCIAL component of the second part of this hunt – the TREASURE HUNT!
Required dress: This year, as in past years, wearing bunny ears WILL BE REQUIRED. Failure to wear bunny ears may lead to your disqualification and confiscation of your Easter eggs! Occasional hopping and putting hands up under your chin is STRONGLY ENCOURAGED and will be rewarded with BONUS POINTS!
After all of you have found all of your eggs at the first location – we will move on, together, to the second location. After you have all found all of your eggs at the second location – you will begin the SECOND PHASE of our Epic Easter Egg & Treasure Hunt. Phase two (2) will be the treasure hunt. This will be a collaborative effort – where everyone works together to solve the puzzles that will lead you to the hidden treasure.
The GOLDEN EGG may contain a QR code. These are squares comprised of many dots. To decipher what information/clue this may provide – you will need a QR Code reader application on your smartphone. Please note – Android phones work much better at reading these than their overpriced, generation behind counterparts – the iPhones. But if that is all you have access to – then by all means, use those crappy phones if you must. Adults (including Mommy) may help you with the treasure hunt (and egg finding) this year – if you require assistance. Just remember, if adults help – they should also be allowed to share in the treasure!
Be kind to each other, hop a lot, smile a lot, and HAVE SOME FUN!
If there are any questions about rules or procedures – please ask Dad/Uncle Chip.
Ready,….. Set,….. GO!!!
Clues from the GOLDEN Eggs!
After they found all the eggs – including the golden eggs – they had 2 clues – which were:
The QR code leads to the website here: The Williamson’s 2019 EPIC Easter Egg & Treasure Hunt! It is a public, but hidden web page – so the QR code or link should be used.
The answer for this is: Family Vacation 2019 is Niagara Falls. The password is just: Niagara Falls – use a space between the words and capitals for the N and the F.
First Website Quiz
The first quiz focused on Christian Values and Safety. As always – I tried to mix a little humor in with everything. After all – you can’t teach them anything unless you can hold their attention!
To move forward they need to get all the answers correct. Nothing less than 100% here is acceptable! When they get all of the questions correct and hit the submit button – a dialogue box will pop up at the top of the quiz. It will have a link to the Level 2 Quiz. (The link is here:
Level 2! – Only For Those of You Demonstrating Evidence of a Developing Pre-Frontal Cortex…)
There is also a hint in that dialogue box that points to the need to solve Question # 10 to access Level 2!
Question #10 (the final question) on this quiz is the key they need to get to access the next level. A big clue is the title of this quiz – which is – The Element of Surprise (with the picture of a Diamond. Double meaning here – Diamonds are commonly used to propose to someone – so there is the surprise. Diamonds are also a form of the element Carbon. So – the theme of the next quiz is The Periodic Table of Elements! Here is the puzzle / clue for question # 10:
The numbers correspond to the Atomic Numbers of various elements on the periodic table. For the first group – it is using both of the letters for each element symbol. For the second group – it is the same word – just using different elements – and only the first letter of the 2 symbol name for the element. So the password is genius! (Ge for Germanium, Ni for Nickle, U for Uranium and S for Sulfur) For the second group it is Germanium (G) Europium (E) Nitrogen (N) Iodine (I) Uranium (U) and Sulfur (S). I did this – because I really needed to use just the first letter of the periodic table symbols for the rest of the game!
So genius is the password – and again – it is case sensitive. No capitals with this one!
Level 2 Quiz
The Level 2 Quiz is all about The Periodic Table of Elements. I allowed the kids to use their copies of the table to solve the puzzles. Even if they have to use the Internet – they are still learning – and the point of this all was to make the learning fun! You can view a copy of the Periodic Table of Elements here: Periodic Table of Elements.
This clue was at the top of the Level @ page. It was not really designed to be solved – without some additional hints. But to get those additional hints….they needed to complete the Level 2 Quiz – of course with a 100% score!
The Level 2 Quiz was ALL ABOUT the ELEMENTS! We have studied The Periodic Table of Elements in the past – so the kids do have a working knowledge of the elements and some of the properties of various elements. They still did need to look up couple of things. Dominick has the first 37 or so elements memorized – so I needed to go a little deeper into the table to challenge him!
For each of the questions of the Level 2 Quiz (other than the first question) they would have to choose the correct element as an answer. Furthermore, they would need to use just the first letter of that element symbol they selected for each correct answer to complete the location puzzle. Upon doing so they would figure out that the solution to the location puzzle was “Sandbox @ Home“. They finally did so with mommy’s help. But everyone contributed along the way – which is what I was hoping for!
The Hunt Intensifies!
So the kids went streaming out the front door and ran to the backyard to get to the sandbox. Ours is a covered sandbox (with pulleys – of course) – so it had to be uncovered to get to the sand. Then there was some fast & furious digging. The knew that it was a Survivor – like task – so of course it would be buried – and probably pretty deep. Annie and Dominick were very close to finding the hidden “match dry” camping storage box that contained the next clue at various points – but it was mommy who ultimately found it. The clue was as follows:
Accudetondes, Calastadas & Amends are all imaginary creatures the kids have come up with over the years – so I thought it would be fun to throw them into the mix!
The Final Clue!
The kids started looking at the playground “fort” above the sandbox (which is approximately 5′ by 5′). One of them finally realized it could also be the playhouse (also about the same size). When they got to the playhouse they got their FINAL clue! That clue was the following:
Bissy are imaginary beings that the three older children attribute to Sophie as their creator. So again – I thought it would be fun to include them in our little hunt!
Finding the Treasure!
It did take the kids about a minute or so to realize that the monkey referred to was probably the “bean bag” monkey that Dominick had gotten for his birthday – which was – you guessed it – April 10th. It is a large monkey that is meant to hold stuffed animals. I had emptied it out and put the “treasure” in it – which was an assortment of snacks and a large K’Nex building kit (K’Nex 100 Model Imagine kit). So, the kids raced back to the front of the house – kicked off their shoes and chased each other up the steps to Dominick & Gracie’s room – to find the monkey right there.
It was a lot of work for me – but well worth it to challenge them and see them have so much fun during the hunt. They had to work together too – which is what I wanted to encourage too.
I felt it was the best job I had done to date of matching the challenges of the hunt to their abilities. I wanted it to be challenging – but not too difficult that they would get discouraged and give up. They knew what they had to do – but had to make sure that they were careful and precise to complete each of the steps and keep the momentum going – which they did well.
I hope you find at least some parts of this useful and fun too!
Sincerely,
