TREASURE HUNT 2016

Like every year, I organized a treasure hunt for my nieces and nephews at the family reunion. Each time I try to do something different, with the additional complication of kids growing older each passing year. This means the challenges and rewards need to be updated

There were around 13 kids. I chose 2 captains based on seniority, and each selected their teams by turns. Somehow girls ended up all together plus one of the boys, so they asked him to be moved so it was girls vs boys. It was unfair since it´d be 5 against 8 but that´s how they liked it

I had previously hid poker chips all around the house. The 1 dollar pieces were at plain sight, 5 dollar chips a bit more hidden. Then the 25 and 50 dollar pieces were fairly hidden but the kids could use some hints written on paper (no more than 5 hints active per team). There were also two 100 chips particularly hidden, one per each team, also with paper hints

I gave them 30 min to look around the house and try to find as many chips as possible. I would say they found 70% of them. Girls outperformed the boys here, and despite being less they got 40% more currency. Go girls!

These chips would be used on the second phase: The auction. They were supposed to use that currency to bargain for the presents. This year I went to Flying tiger, trying to offer “more adult” items. I bought around 30 little items raking from 1 to 3 euros each. On top of that I also got 3 gift cards of 10 euro each for the older ones

The auction went like this: I showed briefly all gifts to them, then gave some minutes to come up with their strategy. Then I would go gift by gift asking them what they wanted to offer from the chip pool they had. They would commonly raise the stakes trying to beat the other team. Boys were more aggressive than girls and actually used better their resources. They got the majority of gifts and by the end have used almost all their chips. Girls were much more conservative and the auction ended with half of their chips being unused. Still they got the gift cards which is what they wanted, so everybody was happy ;)