Treasure Hunt

Baba is a little bit interested in letters at the moment. He knows what his name begins with and what other members of the family’s names begin with and he can spot these letters in most places. He gets very excited when he sees letters that he recognises and I love that he is so into letters.

The thing that he is proudest off is the fact that he can spell BOB and tells anyone who will listen. We try to encourage his love for letters and words as much as possible without pushing it. He is after all only three. He asks what words are all the time and he spots the letters wherever we are. He has spotted letters that he recognises in toilets, the shops, signs, on tv, in books you name it he will probably find it.

He is currently at the stage where he loves joining up dots to write letters and words and wants to try to write in people’s birthday cards and write them all letters. He just loves language.

We have the Oxford Reading Tree books that Baba loves, but I also want to make this whole process fun and exciting and not just about learning letters and words from a book. So Monday night I decided that we would do a treasure hunt through the house.

I sat up late and made some clue cards, and they were very simple cards (he is only 3) “Where is Tito’s bed” “Where do Mummy and Daddy sleep” “Where does Mummy do her art work” all simple items that he knows in the house. But I made sure we went from the first, to second to the third floor regularly, and I finally hid a big pirates trunk behind the sofa in the playroom, with some stencil and dinosaur stickers in.

We started the treasure hunt with a little note, telling Baba that he had to read the clues with Mummy and go and find the next envelope with the next clue in until he found the treasure. We finished the hunt with another letter, telling Baba that he had completed the treasure hunt, and to enjoy his treasure and if he was very good the pirates may leave him another hunt in a few weeks. Well I think he was more excited about the pirates being in the house than anything else! He loved that they had left him treasure, that was a big hit.

To be honest the whole treasure hunt was a big hit, he loved it from the start to the finish and he was so excited about the envelopes, and all the clues. He did also have to stand and think about a few of the clues, but he got all of the answers correct which he found really exciting.

After the treasure hunt, and when he was sat down playing with his stencils and his dinosaur stickers he was still looking at the clue cards and finding the letters that he recognised in the clues. All in all it was a great thing to do and something that will be repeated in this house in the future. I feel that we may have a lot of visits from the pirates over the next few years!