Ideas for a tricky teenager type egg hunt

[peoplepleaser1]

We usually spend Easter with DH's sister and her family and have a traditional egg hunt involving lots of people careering round looking for eggs.

This year it will be just DS (13), DH and I. I know DS will feel a bit strange doing the usual egg hunt. He's at that slightly awkward stage, and is quite self conscious and feels things that we see as good old fashioned fun as 'silly'.

I get it, but I think maybe a variation on the egg hunt would be nice- especially as I'm keen to show DH that we can have fun and make our own versions of tradition.

Can anyone suggest a more grown up type of egg hunt. I'm thinking more along the lines of cracking codes and tricky clues, but I can't seem to put anything together and google hasn't helped.

Can anyone suggest anything please.

I really get that you want to keep doing nice stuff, but are you doing it for you or your giant child??? Mine has requested an egg hunt (she's 13 ) so will have exactly what she always had - her little egg basket and instructions to find 10 mini eggs...

Do you remember supermarket sweep? It was like hard enough to crack and give him a time limit for each clue or something

Write the clues as a poem. A verse for each one. Maybe dh could try to solve them too. Small eggs and maybe money in one spot as teens love money.
Or get him to come up with some crazy clues for his dad so he doesn't feel he is the big kid but all joining in.

We had egg hunts up until adulthood . My mum loved cryptic crosswords though and she put a lot of effort into the clues.
Or you could do one ranging further afield around town maybe? With him finding a landmark and then sending you a photo of it to be sent the next clue?

Mine have to solve riddles to find theirs, if they want an egg hunt. This is because the dog dug up the entire garden so there's nowhere to hide the eggs any more.
Riddles are along the lines of, "My first is in sun but not in bun" etc to spell out a word.
Keeps everyone busy while I faff about with a mug of tea in the quiet.

I did song lyrics one year

For example

Through the dark, through the , through where no ones been before.

The missing word is Door and the song is a million dreams from the greatest showman.

And then the next clue was hidden on a door so teen had to check every door, door frame in the house till they found the clue.

My teenagers still do it, we take it turns to put the plastic eggs out then guide the others in with "getting warmer" etc.

We did a jigsaw treasure hunt for a birthday once, wrote the treasure location in large lettering filling an A4 card, turned it over, marked it up into 8 jigsaw shaped sections, wrote a clue to find the next location in each section. Then cut it up and hid clues 2 to 8, giving the DCs clue 1 to start, they then found the rest in order as written on the pieces. They had to collect them all in sequence, assemble the jigsaw and then find the treasure from the clue on the back.

You could let him do you an egg hunt? or put a single letter of the new WiFi password on each one, he’d soon want to find them all then!

You can use qr codes (generate online and he downloads app to read), code breaking, mirror writing, invisible ink (the frixion pen ink will disappear when heated and reappear once frozen), write a clue on the back of a jigsaw which needs to be constructed before it can be retrieved, print in micro writing and get them to use microscope, pick a favourite book and use letters in the book to build a clue - give instructions so 5/16 would be page 5 letter 16, recruit a friend/family of yours and give him the digits for their phone so he needs to ring it for a clue, use notes on a stave if he can read music, give step directions (5 steps north, turn right, 7 steps East etc).

There are lots of cryptic clues for different locations in the house on the internet so you can use some of those but make it harder to get the clue using the ideas above.

Oh and try to set the locations far apart so #1 upstairs, #2 Back garden #3 front garden #4 upstairs etc, or in ambiguous locations- so under a bed.

I plan to hide eggs in their pigsties of bedrooms, and tell them to clean up

It’s a bit lame having an egg hunt with just one teenager. We’re having a BBQ this year. We’re going to roast marshmallows and put them inside chocolate eggs. How about something like that?

If I were you, I’d just hide one big egg somewhere funny.

At 13 I would worry a bit that the more effort you put in, the more likely he is to find it a bit embarrassing. I think my 12 year old would see straight through attempts to make it more grown up. If you do an egg hunt I'd just hide the eggs and make them difficult to find. I'd ask the 13 year-old if he wants to do one this year too, if you haven't already.

Obviously if he wants to do an egg hunt, then that’s cool. It just sounds more like you want to do it and he’s not bothered. In which case, it’s fine not to.

My 14 and 17 year olds still want a photo egg hunt. I hide eggs around the house the night before in planned places where I have already taken photos of; close ups, odd angles etc., so not too easy. Print photos off, cut up and fold. They select and find one at a time to string it out a bit.

Can you make it a competition between DH and DS. Most hidden mini eggs found = large egg/dvd/Amazon voucher - whatever you would usually buy.

Haven't RTFT but have you thought of geocaching? You bury the eggs at certain compass points and your son uses the gps on his phone to find them.

Echoing previous posters: is it because he wants an egg hunt, or you want to do one to keep the magic? Also, at that age some teenager enjoy devising the egg hunts, rather than hunting. If you like them, have him do one for you!

A friend of mine with several children tried this game for the DCs finding their eggs, when she ran out of ideas for clues, and said that even the teenagers loved it, as something different. The game was that they would hunt with their ears, rather than their eyes. Each child in turn was blindfolded, and six small eggs and one big egg would be hidden on the lawn; the child would be spun round, and told to go hunting! To make it easier, a phone playing music would be placed near each egg, which would then be moved on to the next egg. For the big egg, the phone would be placed a bit further away, so they would have to feel about to find it. Each child would have to pose for a photo with their big egg, and guess what kind it was, before they were allowed to see it!