"Your heart is where your treasure is, and you should find your treasure in order to make sense of everything." - Paolo Coelho
One of the fondest memories I have from our long summer in France in 2015 is the opportunity to finally make this wishful thinking come true.
A treasure hunt.
This idea came to my husband 
My husband ordered two compasses online to be delivered at his parents' house
Designing The Treasure Hunt
The intended players of this game were my then 7 year-old niece, Océane and my 6 year-old nephew, Mahé.
The objective was for both of them to have fun and develop team work. We created it in such a way that they have to learn to work together. Not against each other, but using both of their strengths and skills while making up for each other's weaknesses in pursuing their goal to find all the clues. Océane is good in reading, while Mahé is familiar with the forest.
Additionally, we wanted them to learn how to read a compass, to appreciate the beauty of nature and to enjoy the treasure hunt outdoors.
We filled it with goodies that we found in the supermarket
The Location & Preparation
We sought ways to prepare the treasure hunt in different places. It was important that Océane and Mahé, have absolutely no information whatsoever about the treasure hunt. It should begin as an invitation to learn how to read a compass.
- Parents' house - the place where they learned how to read the compass
- Grandpa's Vegetable Garden - where the first clue was hidden. Ironically, it's also where the treasure was buried.
- Le Bois Saint-Jean - the forest where all of the clues / coordinates were hidden.
We visited the forest twice. The first ocular visit, I selected trees and took pictures of them for sketching. I sketched each one and named the trees after different fairy tales.
I drew sketched clues of the exact trees they needed to look for in the forest.
The second visit just hours before the hunt was spent to hide the clues in their respective locations according to the coordinates and number of steps.
The Clues - Tree Sketches
Here’s how the day activity went:
Yohann taught Océane and Mahé how to use a compass. He showed them how it works, explaining the 4 main directions and degrees. Once they understood the concept, and were clear on how to operate it, he made them try by asking them to stand at a certain point, give them a direction and a number of steps so they could find a small ball he’d previously hidden. They were both excited and happy learning something new. They had no idea what the rest of the day had in store for them.
After lunch, Yohann asked Océane and Mahé if they wanted to play a treasure hunt using the compasses. Obviously the idea was strongly welcomed with excitement and cheers. We all prepared and got ready since we all knew it meant leaving the house for the afternoon. The first thing that we did was to take both of them to Grandpa’s garden. There Yohann asked them to stand at the gate and gave them a direction using degrees and a number of steps. Their aim was to find something (without more explanations) at the destination. This is what you can see in the first video below. What they had to find was an envelope which contained the 10 trees sketches which I had drawn and 1 clue which told them how to proceed. This clue had the following information:
- Make our way to the forest
- The name of the tree they should look for. With the name, they could find the sketch of the tree that matches, so they would know what the tree looks like.
- The direction in degrees and the number of steps from that tree to find the next clue.
We proudly watched the kids work to solve the puzzles together as a team as they searched for clues from the vegetable garden in Château d'Olonne all the way to the forest of Le Bois St Jean.
3.The second video is when we arrived at the forest. It shows Océane and Mahé looking for the first tree and spotting it, followed by finding the next clue.
4.The latter would tell them which tree is the next one to look for and again, a set of direction and number of steps.
5.This went on until they found the 10 trees/clues
My niece and nephew learned to read coordinates and had an exciting afternoon exploring the forest.
6.The last clue had different information. It basically asked them to look at the back of all the clues they had collected. Each of them had 1 word. The information indicated that in order to find the treasure, they would have to put all the clues in the right order so that it would make a sentence telling them where the treasure is. In our case, the sentence said something like “Look for the cross in Grandpa’s garden and dig”.
Putting all of the clues together with random words to form a sentence revealing where the treasure is buried.
7.So there we go, back to where we started. This is what you can see in the last video when they were looking for the cross which was simply 2 sticks in a cross position above the location where we had buried the treasure.
8.Finding the treasure didn’t mean it was over yet. They had 1 more thing to do to reap the reward of that afternoon. The box was locked with a padlock. On top of the box was a set of instructions on how to find the numbers to open it. It was basically 3 clues which would give them 1 number each. For example, one of the clues was “how many days in a week?” once they had all 3 numbers, they simply had to put them in the right order, et voila, open Sesame!
9.The content of the box was a bag of candy with some coins for each of them and 1 extra for each of Océane’s sisters, even though they didn’t participate. There were also some strings to make scoobydoos, card games, bubble makers and some elastic bands to make bracelets.
Everyone had a good time.
It is our dream to re-create this treasure hunt someday in whichever community we may be in in the future. We believe this can be done anywhere in the world.
These kids may have been happy with their reward but they had no idea, they made us both the happiest that day.