Maddie's Scavenger Hunt Party

I had a ball planning Maddie's birthday party this year. She decided on a scavenger hunt theme. We decided to invite her whole class along with a few other friends. There ended up being 27 kids! So we decided to have it out in Mimi's yard.

For the invite, I bought file folders and stamped CONFIDENTAL across the top. Then I put a label on each invite saying the child's name: Secret Agent Madison Billingsley

The invite read like this:

Dear Secret Agent-

You are invited to take part of a very special mission. We have carefully chosen the top agents to be a part of this event. We request your presence at the celebration of Secret Agent Billingsley's 6th birthday. You are to report to: 622 South Baker Circle Leander TX 78641 on October 17, 2008.

The mission will begin promptly at 4:30. If you chose to accept the mission: contact kristibillingsley@gmail.com

Pizza,cake, and drinks following a successful mission.

Before the party, I divided the kids into five teams with five members each. Each team was assigned a color. I bought t-shirts for their team color. I ironed on their names on the front of the shirt. Here is the back of the shirt

I wrote up ten riddles for each team. I color coated the clues so that the kids would read the clue for their team and then move on. I hid the clues all over the yard. Here is an example:

Animals with wings visit me a lot.
Especially when the weather is hot.
They wash their wings and get on path.
Have you guessed, I am a (bird)____.

Did you guess bird bath?

Here is my favorite part. My friend Tiffany helped me make a fake cake out of Styrofoam. We put icing on it to look real. Here we are about to eat the "fake" cake:

The kids did not have a clue that the cake was not real. Then I tried cutting the cake, I even had them try to help! I then let them know that someone had "stolen" our cake and replaced it with a fake cake. Check out their expression, along with my own:

I had five adult team leaders come out dressed in black coats and sunglasses. They called out their team members and gave them their shirts.

We explained that their mission was finding the real cake. Then the kids started the scavenger hunt. Here they are discovering clues throughout the yard:

The real cake was hidden in Tiffany's car. She did an awesome job decorating it. Here it is:

And here we are counting out the six candles!

After cake, ice cream and pizza, we had a devotional. I talked to them about how we are all agents for God. Our mission is share God's love and spread the gospel. We talked about the Great commission and read a few scriptures. Then we had a quick prayer asking God to prepare us for our mission in life. Here are the kids in the devotional.



I had one final game. I hid six clues in the yard. As a group, we used special tools to discover the answers. Someone them required a magnifying glass and others a mirror. This scavenger hunt ended with discovery of the pinata. The kids then took hitting it the pinata.

It was a really fun party. The kids loved it which made all of the hard work worth it. At end of the party, the kids came running up to me saying "Let's do it all again" I guess that means it was a success!