Tablet Treasure Hunt
Anna got herself into serious parental trouble this past Friday. I happened to enter her room when she had just gone out to play with some friends that she’d had over, and randomly picked up a blanket lying on the floor. Under the blanket I found our big tablet computer meaning that Anna had:
a) played with the tablet computer unauthorized and outside of ‘computer time’ (6 pm to dinner),
b) left the tablet computer on the floor, which is a big no-no because somebody could step on it, and
c) hidden it under the blanket, meaning the stepping-on danger was even higher! (And I had in fact nearly stepped on it)
Grrrr…
When she came back inside, she immediately knew what I was talking about when I told her I’d found something in her room, and she was sentenced to two days of no tablet computing. I was deemed a boring mom in return. Oh well.
Now, this happens to be a long weekend (Yay for yet another religious holiday! It’s pretty much the only upshot of having a conjoined state and church imho… but why are there no holidays in the fall?!) so both big kids are home this Monday.
Yesterday, seeing how the tablet would be freed from my clutches this morning, Anna got the ingenious idea that I make a treasure hunt for them to hunt the tablet down. And since I am a fun parent once per year (yup, this was it) I indulged her.
So here’s this morning’s treasure hunt. Note that this was my first ever treasure hunt, so I made some beginner’s mistakes. Oh well…
Clue #1: “Who can sail without wind?” was left on the kitchen table. This was in reference to…
… the notes for “Vem kan segla forutan vind?“. Anna got it as soon as I prompted her on where she’d heard that phrase before. First they searched all over the piano, before finally locating the notebook. This lead to Clue #2: “Under orange food”, which was in reference to…
… carrots in the fridge. Shockingly, this one was really hard for them. They asked if the food was hot or cold, and I answered cold. From there they stumbled upon Clue #4 (see below), but kept looking for Clue #3. They came up with oranges, orange peppers, cheddar cheese, egg yolk, and orange juice, before “this is on the table every night at dinner” finally did the trick. It doesn’t help that the Icelandic name for ‘carrots’ translates to ‘yellow roots’. Anyway, Clue #3 was “Brrr, it’s cold in here!” in reference to…
… a note in plain view in our second fridge ‘hidden’ in the garage (which was a mistake, I should have hidden the note itself). Clue #4 was “Remnants of cheese, ham, and ketchup.” which was in reference to…
… the sandwich grill. The kids made the jump to ‘bread’ right away, but it took a while to go from there to ‘grilled bread’. The look on Anna’s face where she made the mental link from ‘bread’ to ‘grilled bread’ to ‘the grill’ was worth the whole exercise! 🙂 Clue #5 was “There are two white chests of drawers on the first floor.”. This was in reference to…
… a little used chest of drawers ‘hidden’ away in our front room. This note was in the second drawer and it took them no time whatsoever to find. Clue #6 read “Ski jump.”. This final clue was in reference to…
… our Wii Board, which one uses to play the Ski Jump game on the Wii. It took them a good while to think of the Wii (they kept thinking of the stairs because of the ‘jump’ part), and then at least two tries to go from the Wii computer itself to the board. But the tablet was hidden underneath it, and there was much joy as it was reclaimed.