Quests for a child's birthday

Birthday, as you know, happens only once a year, and at least for children, this is the most long-awaited day. It is then that you believe in magic - you are in the spotlight, everyone is trying so that you do not get bored and it was interesting. It is impossible to be limited only to a rich table for a long time, because it will be too boring and somewhere even ordinary.

Likewise, gifts, even the best ones, will not create an endless feeling of celebration, simply because caring parents give them more often than once a year. Therefore, something is needed that will make the birthday man hold his breath and feel like he is in real adventure. Since quests became popular, solving the problem has become much easier.

The birthday quest for a child is an exciting game, which, in its script, is very different from what children play every day. Usually, such a congratulation requires a whole team of participants (in a holiday setting it will be quite easy to assemble it), as well as worthy decorationsthat will create the right atmosphere and make you immerse yourself in a fairy tale.

To do this, however, one should not forget about the basic principles of organizing quests, we offer a few simple tips.

• Focus on the age of the participants. First graders and adolescents are interested in completely different things, as well as their abilities to solve various problems.In addition, a teenage team often needs a leader, and therefore tasks that will reveal him, while all the kids in the team must be equally involved, otherwise resentment cannot be avoided.

• Start from the number of players. No one should be a simple observer - tasks should be such that each player is useful. If there are too many potential participants, divide them into two teams, but try to make sure that no one loses in disgrace. As you think through the script, consider the possibility of occasional involvement of adults.

• Prepare the location for the game in advance. If this is a room, empty it of any objects that might be damaged or spoiled by infatuated babies. When playing outside, clearly define the boundaries of the playing area so that the participants do not disperse and no one gets lost. If the street location is also public, think about how to make sure that your hiding places are not found by random passers-by.

• The number of caches should be related to the age of the participants. It has long been no secret that the ability to concentrate on solving certain problems is acquired as they grow up, and elementary school students lose interest even in really interesting activities rather quickly. If there is no one in the group of participants even 10 years old, eight caches will be a sufficient number, but you can do even less - then the players will simply begin to separate from the team one by one.

• The whole event is started for the birthday man, but there will be many participants in the quest, and therefore its winners. To understand that you won, but still remained without a gift is a very offensive feeling that should not be experienced by anyone. For this reason, do not give your birthday present as part of the quest, but for completing the last one, come up with separate rewards that will be awarded to absolutely everyone who played. Nobody says that it must necessarily be something expensive - small toys, cookies and chocolate medals, even pens with a notebook will be a nice bonus if you deserve them.

In addition, there are approximately four main options for conducting a quest, which differ in the logic of the passage. Decide which one works best.

• Linear. The easiest variety to pass, which is uncontested for the smallest. In essence, it looks like an arcade - you can't get to the next level without going through the previous one. Performing tasks in the sequence as planned by the organizer, children receive a gift only at the very end.

• Collective. There are also many tasks here, but the subtlety lies in the fact that they can be completed in any order. For example, there is a game card that tells you how to find a prize. It is divided into pieces that are hidden separately, while not a single piece by itself allows you to figure out where to look for the treasure. You can search for map fragments in any order, but victory will become possible only after the entire map is collected.

• Encrypted quest. The team has a detailed indication of the location of the prize or a description of the passage of the game right away, but it is encrypted. Children are not looking for a direct indication of what to do next, but for clues that will help them understand what the originally issued instruction means. At the same time, they still have to puzzle over how to match the find with their note.

• Breaking locks. The location of the gift is known from the very beginning - it is literally given out to children. Another thing is that it is locked with several locks, but there are no keys. Actually, the keys must be found, and for this you must fulfill the conditions of the game.

The choice of location depends on many factors - and on the age of the participants, and on their number, and on the degree of difficulty of the quest. Let's look at some examples.

At first glance, the simplest solution is to conduct the quest at home. However, the option with one room disappears almost immediately - if there are at least three participants, then they, even regardless of age, will instantly ransack the whole room and quickly find all the hiding places, and not even in the order in which the scenario was required.

When playing at home, it is better to focus on the minimum number of participants, who, moreover, will not be older than primary school students, in addition, the game location should be extended to several rooms. Alternatively, organize the game so that you don't have to look for anything - instead, riddles are solved.

Space outside the home is good because it gives you much more room for imagination., but at the same time for young children it is quite risky - not the fact that adults will be able to keep track of everyone. From this point of view, a fenced suburban area is best suited. For older children, you can choose a large open area outside the city or even public locations in the city, but then you should prepare for your plan immediately before the start of the event so that the hiding places are not discovered and ravaged by outsiders.

Remember that even the most interesting riddles and tasks will seem cool to some children, and boring to others. Each child has his own tastes, and at the same time he is completely indifferent to other people's tastes. Ideally, the organizers of the quest should choose tasks so that they would be interesting first of all to the birthday person himself - this is his birthday. On the other hand, it is better to choose something that equally involves all potential participants in the game, because on your name day the worst thing is to understand that no one wants to play with you.

It is assumed that all participants are equally involved in the game at all stages, therefore the topic is usually selected specific - this is not "Who wants to be a millionaire?", Where the questions can concern anything. The most popular hobbies that can be used to develop the plot lie on the surface - these are superhero themes, cartoons, space travel, animals, and so on. Someone will need to find the missing princess or the whole team to demonstrate superpower in the form of a team spirit, go to mysterious planets in distant space.

As for the riddles and tasks themselves, they can be given to the participants in any way possible. The most common is the classic "pieces of paper" with puzzles and pictures, but in fact, you can use modern means of communication. So, according to the result of completing the next task, the organizers can send the birthday boy an SMS with the next hint, or even write it with a message on one of the social networks, if they know that the child will definitely guess to read it right there.

Typical puzzles look like this:

• an unobtrusive offer to pay attention to any object;
• classic riddles in prose or poetry - you need to guess the word that will tell you where to look next;
• a crossword puzzle, according to the results of solving which a key word is opened;
• a set of pictures, where the first letters of each depicted object make up a keyword;
• puzzles, having assembled which children will receive a hint thanks to the finished picture;
• text prompts written in mirror image, upside down, or with confused letter order.

Only adults experience true pleasure from the very fact of completing the quest - many of them are even willing to pay money to get the opportunity to wonderfully puzzle their heads. This statement does not apply to children in any way - on the contrary, they need a reward, at least symbolic. Moreover, the simplicity of rewards in many cases is just leveled by the fact that the kids feel - they were given a reward for a reason, they just earned it, which means that the feeling of pride in their successes will be the main gift.

The choice of a specific gift, like everything else in organizing a children's birthday, strongly depends on the age of the participants who completed the quest. For example, at 4 years old, kids are not interested in practical things - they need to be given either sweets or some beautiful and bright toys, and other options may not even be considered. At 8-9 years old, the vision may already be somewhat different - sweets are still in demand, but some useful things will also be appreciated as the same notebooks with pens.

The older the children become, the easier and at the same time it becomes more difficult to find for them a worthy reward for participating in the quest. It is easier - because the circle of interests expands more and more with age, and even at the age of 11-12 a child is already a formed personality, to which an individual approach can be found.

The difficulty lies precisely in this individualism - after all, gifts should be of equal value, and in pursuit of each person you risk inadvertently singling out someone from the crowd. For this reason, it is better to focus on gifts that can be used by the same team that played the quest - this will strengthen the friendship of the guys and preserve the memories of an interesting birthday for a longer period.

With adolescents, it is most difficult in the sense that their mood is difficult to guess. On the one hand, at 13, 14 or 15 years old, the same sweet gifts are still relevant, only, perhaps, not in a too primitive form, like the same chocolate medals. On the other hand, as they get older, demands usually increase, so for their "work" children want to get something really worthwhile. Actually, if you have organized a thematic quest, it would be wise to give out movie tickets on the same topic to the whole company as a prize, or, if the competition somehow concerned animals, to the zoo.

Professionals nowadays have come up with dozens and even hundreds of different exciting scenarios, but their services cost money. Parents can actually invite an animator, if the means allow, and they want to organize something really bright, but at the same time creating a holiday for their own child on their own can turn out to be a kind of entertainment for adults.

In many cases, the task of organizing is not that difficult if you have a good example of all these pirate and adventure scenarios with sample tasks in front of your eyes. If necessary, they can be replaced by adjusting to the realities of the available location, but you need to at least roughly understand the structure of all this.

To make it easier, consider a couple of examples of ready-made quests. Since boys and girls have completely different interests, and the company at a children's birthday party in many cases is of the same gender, let's take one example for both.

There is no boy who has never seen himself in the role of a detective. Give him this opportunity: for this you need one adult presenter and participants in an amount from one (the birthday boy himself) to five (with invited friends). Prepare props: an envelope with a drawn detective, writing materials, a full detective costume (raincoat with a hat, a notebook with a pen, a magnifying glass), a computer or laptop for audio playback, and five paper "tracks" of a puppy or kitten.

Separately prepare a gift - a reward for successful completion. If the birthday person plays alone and always dreamed of a living gift, prepare it, but if there are a lot of participants, the gift animals will be toy ones.

The doorbell rings, and the baby, opening the door, sees an envelope on the threshold. In the letter, the fictional character asks the kid for help and, in the form of one of the riddles described above, gives the first tip to the cache. Hide the already named attributes of the detective in a cache for flavor - it's time to become a real detective! They also hide paper traces with riddles and puzzles applied on them, which are called "evidence" in the new note, as well as a USB flash drive. On a flash drive - a record of sounds made by different animals, and the child is given the task - to identify the "magic cat" or "dog of the Baskervilles".

Ideally, the answers to the riddles lead to a closet in one of the rooms and hint that you need to search your pockets. Files with animal sounds should be numbered, and the child should write down the correct answers in a notebook, which, as a real detective, will just come in handy. The numbers of the correct answers will tell you in which clothes in order to look for the next clue.

Hide a rebus or riddle in the pockets of one or several things, which will hint to the child that the next location is a corridor. Having thoroughly searched it, the kid will find a crossword puzzle in which the key word is hidden - "children's". Searches there will suddenly find an object that should not be there - a collar. Attached to it is a note with advice to look out the window, and under it is already someone from the adults with such a welcome living gift in their hands.

The principle of a quest for a girl is similar to a game invented for a boy, but, of course, with a girlish character. Anything is good - fairies, ponies, princesses, flowers, balls, a display of economic skills and so on.

The first stage is a box filled with crumpled torn paper. Among this junk is a note with a riddle, the answer to which is a pillow. Under the pillow is a code that suggests opening a book, finding the desired page, line, and a word or phrase that clearly points to the next cache, like a cup in a sideboard. The cup contains a note with advice to taste the pie, which is already waiting in the kitchen.

The pie is not simple, but with a note inside. At home, it is easier, of course, to hide the note not inside the baking, but under it. The note is again a rebus, sending the birthday girl to the oven, inside which there is another riddle, which now suggests paying attention to the carpet. Turning over all the carpets, the girl finds the next envelope, and a balloon is planted there - you have already inflated the balloons in advance, and now the birthday girl will destroy the festive atmosphere.

But this is not in vain, because one of the balls contains a message with a riddle, the answer to which will lead to the closet. On one of the shelves there will be a letter with the last riddle, which will concern, say, a window. Choose an always-curtained window that the child is never interested in, and put a gift behind the curtain on the windowsill - this will be the successful completion of the game with the presentation of the prize.

For information on how to arrange a summer quest for children, see the next video.