My lovely wife is out doing last minute Christmas shopping and I’m home with the kids. While it would certainly be easy to just let them play video games all day, I like to challenge them to look beyond their surroundings and think. To do that, requires a fun puzzle, and I’ve been doing this one for a couple of years and they love it. In fact they love it so much that they requested I do it again this morning.
I’ve dubbed it “Moneyhunt”, which is a variation on a treasure hunt, and it is simple and easy for me, but for them, not so much… and that’s the attraction that gets them off the computer games and using skills of observation. I thought it worth sharing, so here’s how I do it.
What I do is take a selection of loose change, typically $1 exactly for each child, and hide it around the house in places that they’d never think to look. I also make good use of camouflage as shown in the picture below:
The trick is to place coins in places that aren’t on regular household surfaces, and to put shiny coins of like diameter on shiny objects that hide them. Darker coins like old pennies go into nooks on darker furniture. Making the coin look like part of the object is key to making it challenging.
I also put coins on top of doorknobs, tape them to the sides and bottoms of tables, and put them in the sea of refrigerator magnets with double sided sticky tape and a small magnet.
I’m still trying to figure out how to hide money on Tubbycat without waking him up:
By making sure you know the exact amount of coinage (in today’s case $2) the kids know just by counting the coins they have collected if they found them all. That last penny is usually particularly frustrating.
If you aren’t a parent, this little game works great for grandparents too.
Next year, since Al Gore’s warmer cronies say I’m apparently flush with cash reaching into the billions, I’m going to put out pure gold and silver coins and hide some gold bullion in the freezer. /sarc Yeah, that should be fun.
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Thanks, I’ll try it with our girls. We do a similar thing at Easter with chocolate eggs. Coins will offer more placement possibilities.
Great idea, thanks. Merry Christmas Anthony.
If you aren’t a parent, this little game works great for grandparents too.
Are you saying Grandparents would enjoy looking for the coins, too?
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Anthony!
A big thank you to you, and your contributors, for a sterling effort during the year.
Cheers
Let us know if they find any of that heat that is hiding in mysterious places. Merry Christmas to your family from the Great White North otherwise known as Canada.
I know a solo variant called ‘Where are my bloody keys?’. Its addictive, I play at least once a week whether I want to or not.
Have none of the kids taught Kenji how to sniff out the coins?
Merry Christmas.
While hiding coinage on Tubbycat might proove difficult, His existance does prove that your household contains FatCats. I would avoid the Washer/Dryer too because you don’t want to be accused of Money Laundering FatCat funds
Have a Merry Christmas
Love it 🙂
When my nephew and niece were young, I put their few presents in huge box with lots of similar empty parcels or ones with silly household items. Then I made them do puzzles (cut out from a cheap book of them) and answer questions. If they got the test right they got to dive for a present. If the parcel was for the other one they had to put it back. It took all day and recently my nephew said he planned to do the same for his own kids (if he ever has them) because they were the best Christmases he remembers.
You don’t have to spend a lot to make the best memories.
Great idea. I’ll have to try it out.
Great game! I’ll hide the coins now for my grandchildren. Oh, what fun before dinner. Thank You!
Merry Christmas
First you have to get them to turn off their cell phones.
I invented a cell phone with a mechanical on/off switch. You simply toggle the switch to the off position and it immediately cuts the battery power to the phone. It also prevents the NSA from spying on you and stops people from bothering you.
Look for my new cell phone feature I invented on store shelves next year.
Wish the grand kids were closer.
I play that game several times a day with my reading glasses.
Thank you for providing such a great blog, Anthony and very best wishes to you and your family.
Happy Christmas to all.
Used to do something similar at Easter, using foreign language clues and dictionaries to tell the kids where the next clue and Easter egg could be found. The starting point would feature the Japanese word for refrigerator or bathroom or whatever and the kids would go there, get the next word (might be in German), look it up while collecting the egg, on to the next location and so forth.
Merry Christmas to all and warm thanks to our fine host here.
Merry Christmas!
Great idea! I will recommend to my friends (no small children – thank god… and no grandparents yet).
Merry Christmas to you all from the birthplace of Jesus :-).
Eyal
Indeed. Merry Christmas Anthony and all.
Maybe Bitcoin next year 🙂
hey send me a buck or i email the pictures!
Mr. Watts,
Thank you for all that you do and have done to aid the increase and diffuse of knowledge.
You have the patience of Job.
Sounds like some $2 are worth more than others.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Or you could just look at this :-
http://earth.nullschool.net/
Dear Eyal,
Shalom and Merry Christmas, to you and to your family in the Town of David. The world owes so much in so many ways to God’s (please forgive my writing out His name) Chosen People, the Jews. Isn’t it amazing? We believers in Jeshua forget (How could we? I don’t know! But, we do!) that He and Mary and Joseph and all the disciples and nearly the entire early Church were Jews.
May your evening and your morning be peaceful and may 2014 bring you much joy.
Gratefully from a Gentile who loves Jews!,
Janice
Click EARTH and height 250 hPa to see the jetstream
http://earth.nullschool.net/
Eyal,
You live in a manger?