A Mother’s Day Treasure Hunt (or mother’s day scavenger hunt) is a great way to show mom how much you love and appreciate her and everything she does for the family. It’s also very budget friendly as it can be done for practically free, or you can include more expensive treasures if that’s the way you prefer to go. So the basic idea is to have have kids and Dad hide mom’s gifts (favorite candies, card, etc) or little thank you notes all over the house and then leave clues about where those little treasures are hidden. If you keep it short and sweet (not even that short really) and hide non-perishables then you could actually let her take her time and find all the gifts on her own time – the mother’s day gift that keeps giving! In our family’s case the kids made Mother’s day cards at school so we were able to include them as part of the treasure in addition to the other items I mentioned.
It’s up to you if you want to include items at each clue location or if you want to just have one big treasure at the end. Personally, I like the idea of lots of little gifts because it means Mom gets to keep finding stuff and will get to constantly wonder what’s gift she’ll get next. Oh the suspense! And just so you know, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with making all of the little treasures she finds along the way be loving notes from the kids and from dad about how you all appreciate the little things that Mom does for the family! She’ll love it – I promise!
Mother’s Day Treasure Hunt Plan
So here’s my plan. I get up with the kids and get everything going on Sundays so we’ll have some time Sunday morning to put the finishing touches on things, but it will only take a few minutes so it could easily be done Saturday night if I wanted.
When Mom wakes up, there’s one thing we all know for sure, and that is she wants coffee. We’re not going to get in her way! But we will use that information to our advantage and make sure that before she gets to the coffee pot she’s presented with a clue. Maybe we’ll place itmaybe on the bathroom mirror or flush handle or the bedroom door handle, but no matter where we place it we already know where it will lead. The first clue will be one that takes her where she wanted to go anyway, to the coffee pot, but a clue before she gets there also lets her know that somethings up!
Sample Coffee Clue: Get the day started with your good friend Joe, every one’s excited so come on let’s go!
Answer: Coffee (clue source huntclues.com)
Mother’s Day Treasure Hunt Preparation
Now, on to the actual hunt prep. I’ve checked the weather forecast and it’s not supposed to be raining on Mother’s Day so we’ve got options about whether we hide things outside or not. There are plenty of places to hide clues and treasures inside the house so I wasn’t really worried about it, but it’s good to have options and to know your limitations.
Last night (Friday night) I had the two kids that are old enough to write think of 5 things each that they appreciate about their mom. They wrote out little “I love you because” and “thank you” notes for each of those 5 things. I will be helping the 3 year old come up with a few ideas as well and let her sign them when we’ve written them up.
After the kids write their notes I cut them along the lines on the page (I actually photocopied the note pages before we cut them up in case mom wanted them in a notebook later rather than as a group of little pieces). With two kids of writing age this gave us 10 individual notes. One of those notes is to be left with each clue and then the final treasure will include the mother’s day card and the gifts that the kids made at school for mommy. That’s the plan anyway! We’ll see how it goes. I’ll follow up with a report on how the whole Mother’s Day Scavenger hunt went after it’s over. We’ll be using the ultimate scavenger hunt clues and treasure hunt clues site to assist us with clues for each place we hide items.
Note: One of the kiddos suggested that when possible the loving notes we leave for Mommy should be related to the item where it was found. So, for example, if we have a clue that leads to a clock, then when mommy finds the clock and she reads the note it might say something like “thanks for all the time you spend with me” or something like that. Time : Clock… got it. Now that I think about it the little notes could be clues all by themselves! I don’t think we’re going to do it that way, but it probably wouldn’t be terribly difficult to marry the clues and notes to get Mommy through the whole hunt.
Post Mother’s Day Treasure Hunt
The hunt is done and it went very well I think. Mom almost smiled and cried (at the same time) several times. I think it was good that we did the hunt inside so Mommy could do the whole thing in her pajamas!
Advice: I think letting the kids create the little notes (not the clues – more on that in a minute) was a great idea. As far as the clues are concerned I think it will probably go best if the younger children get to be in the hunt (they don’t know the clues or the hiding places) and that at most one older child is involved in actually designing the hunt. Why? Because when little kids have secrets they just want to share them and Mommy barely even gets to hunt. Plus, the more kids that are in the hunt with Mom the closer she gets to feel to them as she reads the little love notes they wrote to her. It’s a surprise to everyone when each note shows up.
After the hunt Mommy asked if I had something in which she could store all of her little notes from the Mother’s day treasure hunt so she could keep them forever! When you get that type of question then you know you did something she appreciates and will, forgive the pun, treasure for years to come.