Hobbies And Interests
Theme Story
Make up a story to go with the treasure hunt. You can act as if you received a treasure map with a mysterious letter in the mail as an inheritance from an unheard of relative. If you live near a beach or lake, you can pretend a treasure map in a bottle washed up on shore. Another intriguing idea is to say you discovered the treasure map in a trunk in the attic. You can base the entire hunt around your made-up tale. Teens enjoy spooky mysteries and scary tales.
Music Treasure
If your group of teens is part of an amateur band, members of the school or church choir or simply share a love of a particular musical artist, you can purchase tickets to a concert or other type of musical activity for the hidden treasure. Print out clues on sheets of paper that only have musical notes on a staff. It will not take the teenagers long to figure out that the musical notes spell out a clue. Once they figure out what the clue word is, such as a bathtub, they can go to it to retrieve the next clue and so forth until they arrive at the treasure.
Picture Codes
You can draw simple figures on paper to give the teens their clues. For instance, you could draw a figure of a stick person to represent a man, then the letter “E” and then a circle next to it to represent balls. Soon the teens will figure out this clue means “many balls” and this will send them off to the pool table in the game room to search for the next clue or the garage where you keep soccer, football and basketballs. Alternately, you can use a cryptic code to substitute numbers for letters of the alphabet. Anything that is a bit tricky to figure out will keep them entertained for hours.