As every year in my family gathering, I organize a group activity for my nephews. It was originally a kind of gymkhana, then transitioned into a treasure hunt
However
this year I tried something different, because I wasn´t sure if the weather
would be favorable, and secondly because hiding the clues for the treasure hunt
was a lot of work and the kids fully expected that to a point they looked for
them hours before the event started
So I tried
a small competition on a series of challenges: I asked for a couple of captains
(generally the older ones), gave them a recap of the trials and asked them to
choose teams among the rest of kids, and assign one “champion” per challenge.
That would make the teams root for/against, and keep them interested
The trials
themselves were easier to arrange than other years: Some were simplified versions
of board games (Trivial, Pictionary, Brainstorming) or well-known party games
such as the balloon race or beer pong. Every challenge rewarded a number of
tokens to the team
By the end,
each team had around 90 tokens. Somehow it balanced it itself, although I´ll
admit some trials gave much more benefits than others. I asked them to
participate in an auction, so they would bet on the gifts I had bought. I
prefer this approach to just assign prices to each present, since an auction
prevents “exploits” – I can see some gifts being too cheap or expensive when
confronted to the kid´s real interests
One
additional challenge every year is to update the rewards, since the kids are
growing up and most of them are too old for child games. But if you tempt them
with gift cards or apple/android credit then the interest increases. This year
I gave them both Carrefour and Game credit, as well as mobile phone money
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