Conducting a quest for teenagers

Quest has become not just a popular interactive game that is popular with both adults and children, but also an original way to spend a holiday - a birthday or graduation, for example. The quest program will depend on the age of the participants, gender, their interests and, of course, the imagination and capabilities of the organizers.

A quest for teenagers can be held at home, and on the street, and at school, and on the road, in nature, on a sports ground, in museums - there are a lot of options. And each place opens up new possibilities for the content of the quest.

Let's consider several localization options.

• Outdoors. It can be a healthy lifestyle quest, a forest marathon, visualization of a certain literary work in which events unfold in the forest. The latter option is especially attractive, since narrowly thematic quests guarantee maximum immersion of participants in the atmosphere of the chosen topic. In nature, finally, you can intersperse sports competitions, motor competitions with intellectual, search and others. And the footage limitation is not the same as at home or at school.

• Houses. If there is no way to organize something outside the apartment, this is not a reason to abandon the quest. It is enough to think over the locations of the house in order to understand how to use them in search tasks. But you need to be prepared for the fact that you will have to use all the rooms and even the bathroom, the closet. If these are "little teenagers" (10+), this format will suit them more than older guys.

• At school. A great idea would be a quest dedicated to the beginning of the school year or the end of it. Or the birthday of the school, for example.It's time to learn the history of the educational institution, but not from a boring lecture, but in the form of a search game. Children can interact with high school students, teachers, librarian.

• On the street, in the yard. The courtyard of your own high-rise building (or a section of a private house) can also be used for a quest. Of course, serious preliminary preparation will be required, but if the organizers get down to business together, everything will work out. The main thing is that the weather does not disappoint. A great option for a child's birthday: treats at home, organized games and entertainment on the street.

• In the library, in the museum. Such quests help popularize cultural institutions. Children in a fundamentally different way get to know the museum expositions or the library fund. As a result, the guys become regulars of these places.

These are universal, most common quest locations. Options, alternatives are always implied. Someone wants to take the teenagers to the dacha, someone decides that the quest can be organized along the route of the historical center of their hometown.

The focus is on the interests of the children, as well as on how rare this topic is for them. If teenagers are not participating in the quest for the first time, perhaps some hackneyed topic will already be familiar to them - then you need to concentrate on something original. And yet there are top scripting topics that are of interest to most.

The theme, which has revived since the appearance in the box office of "Pirates of the Caribbean", still attracts with romance, adventurism and aesthetics of the festival. If the quest is planned to be a library one, then you can make the following condition: only those guys who have read R. Stevenson's book "Treasure Island" by the given day can participate in it.

Let's analyze what is needed for the quest.

• Attributes. Pirate hats, vests, headbands, headbands with skulls - all this is willingly used by the participants to create the right atmosphere. Quests can be in an old chest or in the form of messages in a bottle.

• Questions and tasks in an interesting presentation. Everything in one way or another should relate to the maritime theme, adventures, possibly geographic and literary information. Tasks should be diverse, just questions will not work - you need puzzles, tasks strictly on time, captain competitions, picking up the map piece by piece, and much more.

• Thematic gifts. Of course, these can be quite ordinary prizes in the form of sweets or some small gadgets. But you can think of something more interesting. For example, marine gold hunters can win gold certificates to visit a bowling alley, paintball, game center, or buy books from a bookstore.

Participants can be divided into competing teams, but you can make only one team that will fight for the treasure. The treasure is the prizes that they find by completing all the tasks. The leader of the quest is usually an adult who should also look like the theme. It may have hint attributes: for example, a spyglass, in which there will be a missing map element that participants collect throughout the quest.

The game of "Sherlock" is also in demand among teenagers of different generations. And there is no need to invent a super-attribute, modern, advanced - most of the guys want to touch the retro theme. That is, to play detectives from the last century. In this case, they will need: a magnifying glass, a typewriter (or its imitation), old notebooks with tips, ciphers and puzzles from the books of ancient scientists and researchers, and the like.

Here's an example scenario diagram. A valuable exhibit has disappeared from the museum. The kidnappers are unknown. But they left some traces that can be regarded as evidence. These traces along the chain will lead to the find.For example: a kidnapper dropped a button at the crime scene. In the room where the quest takes place, there will be images of local residents, one of which is wearing clothes with the same button. And this resident is, for example, a baker. This means that the next stage of the quest will be associated with a "search" in the bakery.

The valuable exhibit found as a result can be anything: a gem, an old manuscript, an autographed book by Arthur Conan Doyle (the autograph may not be real, of course, but, for example, written addressed to the participants in the quest).

In conclusion, all participants must be presented with certificates of detectives and some related attribute. For example, branded laminated business cards in vintage style or imitation of a Sherlock Holmes headdress.

In the era of Elon Musk (and this can already be said with confidence) and the space theme has found some reboot. Such stories appeal to both girls and boys, and adults organizing the quest. The scenario can develop in different ways: you can focus on the training of astronauts, you can - on the launch of a supernova satellite, you can - on a meeting with a UFO.

This quest will have three stages.

• Theory. Here the guys have to demonstrate knowledge in the field of astronautics. Of course, they need to be told in advance what topic the quest will be on so that they can get ready. Questions can be in the form of cards on paper, displayed on multimedia, or something else.
• Practice. This can include constructing models of a rocket from prepared components, imitating a weightlessness test (with some special helmet and questions that will confuse a child with closed eyes, standing on one leg).
• Super mission. This is the finale of the entire quest. For example, participants must decipher a message from aliens. Each letter in it is a cipher in the form of a picture or a question, and so the letters have to spell out the whole sentence or word. If they do, their super mission is complete. And then they all receive cosmic gifts from brothers in mind.

In advance, you can make full-length cardboard figures in spacesuits, in which there will be a slit for the child's face - for memorable photos.

And a few more ideas of what teenage quests can be devoted to.

Interesting topics:

• young people strive for a healthy lifestyle (to make a narrow topic - competitions based on the Olympic Games or Ironman);
• climbing - to devote the quest to outstanding moments in the history of mountaineering, in the final the guys must hoist their flag on Everest;
• Lost (adventures on a desert island);
• Egyptologists are looking for treasure;
• empire of superheroes Marvel;
• filming a movie.

And, of course, the quest on the theme of the legendary work of J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter", which has been popular for a long time and is still relevant to this day, stands apart. The theme of Hogwarts and its inhabitants can be played up endlessly, and the guys are always fascinated by it.

If all children are united by a common cause, the topic may be devoted to this very thing. For example, for students of one class, this will be the history of the school and its secrets. For girls from the choreographic circle - the quest "Virtual tour of the Bolshoi Theater". And many other interesting topics.

More often quests are organized for a child's birthday for him and his friends. This is a large-scale themed game that can stretch over several hours, interrupting for refreshments and chat.

What should be foreseen by the organizers of the quest:

• visual design of the event according to its theme - it must be expressive;
• musical background - in advance you need to compose a playlist with themed music, but at the same time such that teenagers 13-14 years old will like it;
• a jury or commission that will calculate points, check assignments;
• a presenter who enthusiastically and emotionally sets the children up for search;
• prizes as the culmination of the search - they should be interesting, long-awaited and preferably obtained not from the hands of the presenter, but found where they are intricately hidden.

These examples will help you create a more detailed event plan. The main tasks in any quest aimed at finding a treasure or completing a super mission are presented in three types.

• Puzzles. Children are offered to solve complex, colorful, well-visualized puzzles, charades, anagrams, crosswords, labyrinths.

• Assignments with props. For example, the manifestation of invisible ink, the opening of locks or boxes, and more.

• Active tasks. Anything from obstacle course sports to psychological experimentation, collecting artifact fragments or potion ingredients is suitable here.

And a couple more nuances. For example, while completing assignments, the guys are entitled to 3 unexpected hints. So, the key to one task comes to one of the participants in the form of SMS. Or you can run a cat into the room, on whose neck there is a ribbon with an inscription-key. Or, for example, a home phone rings in the house, and a mysterious stranger utters just one key word.

The holiday form is universal. If this is a birthday quest, then not only children can be involved in it, but also adults present at the birthday party. That is they can become participants too, but it should also be a surprise for them.

And finally, there are 7 rules for a successful quest.

1. Clear organization with delegation of authority.
2. The final climax, which is charged with emotions as much as possible. Ideally, guys should find what the goal of the search game is.
3. Lots of paraphernalia and thematic design.
4. Treats that are offered to the children right during the quest are thematically related to its scenario.
5. Assignments that are well prepared. All inscriptions should be clear, distinguishable, print - high quality, multimedia design - understandable and meaningful.
6. Force majeure is provided. If suddenly the guys do not cope with the task, the masters with the right hints or the hints themselves must be present at the quest. There is no need to put the participants in a hopeless position.
7. All information about the quest must be kept secret.

Happy and exciting holiday!

The following video will tell you about the quest at home.