Birthday Scavenger Hunt

Birthdays are the most celebrated events across the entire globe, and for good reason. What better occasion is there to celebrate than the actual date of someone’s birth? Coming into the world for the first time is definitely a reason to throw a party or gather up a group of friends and/or family. However, what do you do when you have all those friends and family over? How do you keep such a group of people entertained and hyped up for the event? Parties are fun and all, but they are nothing without a good game or an exciting mini event to keep everyone happy.

The answer that works for almost any occasion is the scavenger hunt! Birthday scavenger hunts can be awesome ways to keep masses entertained and have a grand time all at once, while paying your due respects to the person who’s birthday is being celebrated.

Some people may read this and think that we mean that scavenger hunts are fun for a kid’s birthday party. While that may apply, scavenger hunts can be fun for anyone and everyone. All you have to do is plan it right and choose the right ideas, and you’ll have a blast with all of your party-goers. So while kids will definitely enjoy a birthday party scavenger hunt, adults and teens could certainly have a great time as well.

The first thing that you should probably do when coming up with a proper birthday scavenger hunt is pick a decent and possibly related theme. A theme is a governing idea or topic that an entire game will revolve around, so you should make sure that your theme is suitable and has enough leeway to allow you to build an entire scavenger hunt event off of it.

Your scavenger hunt theme can, of course, be birthday, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a birthday oriented scavenger hunt. This doesn’t always have to be the case, though. Most birthday parties already have a theme that they themselves are built upon, so you could always just borrow that same exact theme and use it to plan your scavenger hunt. This is also not your only other option. Your scavenger hunt theme could be something entirely irrelevant. One thing that many people tend to do is take a topic or subject of interest of the person who’s birthday it is, and use that as the foundation for the event. For example, suppose the person who’s birthday it is really has a thing for superheroes, and the entire birthday party is set up to resemble a superhero theme. This would be a great opportunity to use that theme and expand upon it in your scavenger hunt. You could even choose to use the person themselves as the theme. Some scavenger hunts have objects and clues that are built upon all of the interests and ideas that are enjoyed by the birthday boy or girl.

After coming up with a good theme for the scavenger hunt, you should then try to decide what you will use for all of the objects and things that your scavengers will actually be looking for in the scavenger hunt. This shouldn’t be that hard, as you should already have the basic items that will come to mind when you think of the theme you came up with in the previous step. Let’s use the superhero example yet again. The items that your scavengers can be looking for could possibly be icons or symbols representing the superhero of your choice, or pictures of any of them.

For an adult scavenger hunt, you can always use random things from around the house that pertain to the theme that you chose. There are bound to be vast assortments of things in the home that are relevant to the chosen theme, and all you have to do is pick some out that will be interesting and possibly difficult for your scavengers to come upon. You always want to be sure that your objects can be found, but are not too easily discovered, or you will end up with a frustrated crowd or a bored one. The goal is to have neither, and hit that sweet spot right between too easy and too hard, and only then will you be able to engineer the perfect scavenger hunt birthday party!

Last but most definitely not least of the things that need to be planned for a birthday scavenger hunt is the clue list. Clues can be riddles or even just regular hints. Now, this may be the step that actually takes up most of the time in the organization stage, because coming up with riddles and hints can sometimes be a tricky process. You need to make sure that your clues can be understood and deciphered by all age groups that attend the party, and this is often not easy when you have large amounts of family and a great amount of friends. Ages tend to vary amongst large groups, so you would have to make sure that your clues can be understood by the younger people as well as the older ones.

If you have a large expanse of land or property that you have the potential to use for the scavenger hunt, your list of clues can afford to be more vague and allow people to wander around for a little longer. You also have to consider how much time you will have alotted for your event when making your list of clues. Often times, people create dedicated events for birthday scavenger hunts alone, rather than putting it off to just a few hours. If this is true for you and you have a decent amount of time for your scavengers to play, you can afford to use riddles and things that take a little longer to figure out and execute. Riddles can be great ways of stimulating curiosity and intrigue, but they can also be frustrating and overly exerting if you don’t be careful. You need to make sure that all of your riddles, if you choose to use them, are easy to understand but not too easy to the point where anyone can figure them out in a matter of seconds.

If you have very limited time and smaller area for the use of the scavenger hunt, it would generally be better to plan a birthday scavenger hunt that utilizes a shorter and more to-the-point set of hints and clues, rather than complex puzzles and conundrums. This can let your scavaneger hunt move along faster and keep things flowing easily.

Birthday scavenger hunts can also be organized in various ways, and it’s best to choose the way that works the most flawlessly for your group of participants. You can choose to organize your scavenger hunt using teams or no teams. You can use the famous photo scavenger hunt method, or the regular old fashioned pen-and-paper. You can decide to give away prizes to the winners, or you can choose to make it so that the only prize is the satisfaction of winning. One way or another, organization is an important thing to consider when planning a scavenger hunt.

Teams or groups can be utilized in your birthday scavenger hunt if you have large groups of people, or many people of different age groups. This way, you can pair people of different interests and ages off so that they can work together to figure out things that they wouldn’t be able to successfully pull off by themselves.

Photo scavenger hunts can also be fun ways of organizing birthday scavenger hunts, as it eliminates the necessity of evidence that you found each item on the clue list, and they also provide valuable memorabilia that can be cherrished for years to come.

Awarding prizes is usually a thing that can be done for younger age groups, although it can also be used for adults. If you want to add a special twist to the entire event, you can always let the birthday person choose certain elements to the game, and let them have a special role in the event. This helps make the event more about them, keeping the birthday as the whole subject of the scavenger hunt.

Birthday parties are great times to schedule scavenger hunts, whether you choose to let the scavenger hunt be a short part of the party, or use it as a standalone event that takes up a longer period of time. There are many choices you can make, so choose wisely while planning a birthday scavenger hunt, and you can definitely end up with a group of very happy scavengers, and an even happier birthday person!