Wicks Family's Year of Adventure Mission 1: Pirate Scavenger Hunt

As I mentioned before,I gave my children a year of adventure for Christmas 2011.   Each month, we will complete a mission together as a family.  For the month of January, we were a band of pirates on a mission to complete a scavenger hunt.  With my man tribe, it was not at all difficult to transform ourselves into pirates.  Creating this assignment was very easy to do.

1.  First, I found some pirate themed paper for the list of tasks.  I found really colorful free pirate stationery on the Busy Bee Kids Printables website.  I had to print it out first and then print the list of tasks on the same sheet of paper on top of the watermark.  I'm sure there was probably an easier way, but it worked out just fine.

2.  Next, I created my list of tasks.  I was inspired by the Living the Life of a Pirate Family Scavenger Hunt example on About.com's Homeschooling page.  I used most of the ideas, but tweaked it a bit to make it our own.  

3.  Finally, I sealed it in January's envelope and placed it in the Family Adventure bag.

On Christmas day, the boys really did an amazing award-winning job of pretending to be excited about my gift.  I expected this reaction, so even though I'd stayed up until three in the morning creating this gift of motherly love, I was able to take their response in stride.  A bag of envelopes can't compete with the grandparent's Christmas gifts!

Of course, the real excitement began when they actually opened the envelope in January and saw the pirate on the stationery. Our scavenger hunt was everything I'd hoped it would be.  It was filled with problem solving, laughter, and fun.  At different times, the two oldest each stepped up to take leadership of the tasks. That was really interesting to see.  We even "blew things up" by blowing bubbles with bubblegum.  It was our first bubble gum blowing lesson, and it was a mess.  I have three words to describe it, "lots of saliva!" 


I've been wanting to become more intentional about creating memories with my children.  I think this Year of Adventure is a great start.  I hope this post inspires you to think creatively about ways to build memories with your family.