Greetings, dear readers! In this material you will find a treasure map for children and some useful tips on how to create an exciting quest for kids. The encrypted card is not just a game, but also an opportunity to unleash your creative potential. This activity will be interesting for both boys and girls.
How to do it yourself?
To entertain the kids, you can make a treasure map with your own hands. For this you will need:
- paper;
- felt-tip pens and pencils;
- scissors;
- pictures, stickers, printouts on pirate themes;
- matches;
- glue.
To make the workpiece as believable as possible, you must first make an imitation of antiquity. The simplest thing is to lightly set the paper on fire on all sides. This gives the impression that she has been burned.
Now come up with a code. Options may vary:
- replacing letters with numbers;
- cyclic shift of characters in the alphabet (to create a cipher under each letter of the alphabet, enter a letter located 3 characters to the right of the original letter);
- writing a word backwards, etc.
It would be great if you were able to create your own, completely new cipher. Now come up with a cipher text. You can print it out or write it on the card yourself using a fancy, antique-style font.
Next, get pictures or stickers with a pirate theme. Draw on a piece of paper the area where the treasure is kept. Use a cross to mark the place where the treasure is hidden. Glue pirate images around: pirate figures, skull and crossbones, etc.
Be sure to mark the place from where the pirate ship will move: this will be the starting point. Use a red line to draw the ship's path to the designated location. Label the names of the terrain elements (lakes, rivers, deserts, mountains, etc.) and color the blank.
Your basis for the quest is ready. Now let's look at how to use it correctly.
How to play?
Playing pirates is popular for children aged 4–5 years, but even older schoolchildren love it. True, they will have to make the tasks more difficult. The quest can be carried out not only in kindergarten or school, but also in an apartment on a day off, at a child’s birthday party, at the dacha, etc.
If you are creating a game for kids indoors or in the yard, hide the “treasures” in a designated place and sign the names of all the relief elements indicated on the map. Children will only have to follow the names of places to get the treasure.
For elementary and middle school students, the task should be made more difficult. Make a map with tasks. For example, to find out the next direction of travel, they must answer a question. Tasks can be written on cards and glued to a blank or placed along the route to the treasure.
Ask the children any questions. They can be school themed, test logic or imagination, take the form of a crossword puzzle, etc. Whatever questions you come up with for kids, make sure they are age appropriate.
The more intricate the quest, the more interesting and mysterious the entertainment will be. Be sure to reward the guys at the end of the game. The treasure must be worthy of the efforts that children will make to find it.
Entertainment options
If you don't want to draw the site plan yourself, you can download and print it from your computer. Although the homemade version will look much more interesting. In addition to the pirate map, you can prepare various game plans for the quest.
For example, if the New Year holiday is approaching, you can hide a gift for your baby not under the tree, but somewhere else and mark it on a piece of paper, presenting it as a letter from Santa Claus. Let the children complete tasks and answer questions to become the owners of desired gifts.
On February 23 or March 8, kids together with one of their parents can hide a gift for mom or dad and ask them to find it using the signs. At school, you can hold such a quest on September 1 to introduce and make friends with children.
If you're having a house party, ask the kids to hide the treasure and make a map, while the adults find the treasure using the clues.
In general, there are many options for making and using a plan to find treasure. Finally, throw a pirate party and entertain your guests with an unusual quest.
So, what does it take to make a pirate treasure map?
- Burn a sheet of paper on all sides to create an antique look.
- Encrypt the text and place it on the sheet.
- Draw a plan of the area and indicate the names of its elements.
- Stick pirate pictures around.
- Mark the location of the treasure and the path to it.
If you know of other ways to make or use a children's treasure map, please share your observations in the comments. Your observations will be interesting to other readers!
Drawing a treasure map for children - materials, tools and instructions. Children's games are varied and often interesting even for adults. For the full mental and physical development of a child, it is good to combine intellectual tasks with mobility in games.
Such a game could be a “treasure hunt” - a real quest that will become an exciting adventure for children, and it is easy to implement both within an apartment and in the courtyard of a country house. The only thing parents need to do is hide the “treasure” and draw a treasure map for the children.
Treasure map templates. Print and draw your own map according to your area or apartment: 
Preparation of materials
To make a treasure map you will need:
- A sheet of paper (it is advisable to choose a thick one, like Whatman paper);
- Colored pencils and a simple pencil;
- Eraser;
- Stencils;
- Tea and dishes;
- Candle and matches;
- Scissors;
- Twine.
Preparing the Paper
The card paper needs to be aged:
- To process paper you will need to brew strong black tea;
- You need to pour it into a bowl where you can put a sheet of paper of the desired size without crushing it (for example, a baking sheet);
- The paper can be left in the bowl for a few minutes so that it is well saturated with tea;
- After removing the sheet, it must be placed on a flat surface to dry.
The paper prepared in this way will be slightly deformed (crumpled) and will acquire an uneven brownish tint.
Now you can cut the edges of the paper (so that the outline is uneven) and, using a candle, carefully singe the edges of the card.
Drawing a treasure map
When the paper is completely ready, you can proceed directly to drawing:
- A sketch is drawn on a separate piece of paper, having previously thought through where the rocks, islands, groves, ships will be;
- It is not at all necessary that the map exactly replicate all the objects that are found in the area (in an apartment or on the street), because the “pirates” hid the treasure for a long time and since then the “landscape” could have changed significantly;
- If the surrounding area is too simple (or there is not enough space in the room), then in the place designated as a treasure, you can hide only a hint that will guide the children along the further trail (hints can be placed in hiding places more than once);
- By changing the location of the treasure and clues with different directions, the map can be used an infinite number of times;
- It is better to draw the outlines of objects on paper with a simple pencil, using stencils if necessary;
- You can make the map monochromatic - this way it will look naturalistic. This map will appeal to school-aged children;
- You can color the map with colored pencils - this will make it brighter and more attractive;
- The finished card needs to be rolled into a tube and tied with twine.
Treasure hunting is good for two or three children, as well as for a group of kids at a children's party. Anything can be a treasure: toys, sweets, etc. It is important that there are enough gifts for all participants in the search.
"Fire will help you"
What does it mean? If you yourself haven’t guessed (that you need to hold part of the card over the fire, because there is an inscription written in milk on it), then you can enter the words “ Fire will help you" as an answer in the level
And Captain Jack Sparrow will laugh at the fact that he slipped you empty parts of the map, but then he will still tell you what it’s all about.
Wow! Have you completed all the tasks and found the last part of the map? Ha-ha-ha, but it’s empty! Okay, okay, it was a bad joke. Hold the last part of the map over the fire and maybe it will help you.
Aha, now there can be no doubt, you need to hold the last part of the card over the fire and the words will appear.
In our example, “WORD” appeared on the map, but you will have to write the place where the gift is.
As you can see, after the card was held over the fire (be careful not to burn the entire card:) a word appeared on the card, indicating the place where the hidden gift lay. Quest finished :)
Now let's figure out how to make this inventory.
How to make a pirate map
First, download the map file and print it. This is what the original map file looks like.
How to divide a map into 6 parts
I do not recommend printing the map in A4 format, but printing it a little larger (at least one and a half sheets of A4), then each part of the map will be large enough. This is the map I got (one and a half sheets of A4). If this format is not convenient, print it on two sheets of A4 (the map itself will print on two sheets)
As you can see, the map is filled with different places like “Storm Island” or “Dead Man’s Bay”; it also contains icons of cannons, rum, the Jolly Roger flag, an anchor, a black mark, a cross, a steering wheel and a chest. This is also done so that in the quest you can make a reference to the map to find out, for example, “the number of cannons in Fort Hope” or “find out the number of chests in Flint Mountain.”
The middle of the map is empty, this is done so that in this middle, if you want, you can schematically draw a plan of the area or apartment with a designated place where the gift is hidden. In our case, this place will be empty.
This is what the map looked like after I burned it a little around the edges. Be careful, don’t get carried away and burn a hole in the map like I did :) But since there are no vital places on the map in this place, I left it and didn’t redo the map.
At first I drew a plan of our apartment on the map, but then I abandoned the idea of using it in the quest, but I left the plan just in case, it did not interfere with the quest.
This is what the map looks like after dividing it into several parts. It is important that the first part of the map contains a complete (not cut) island of the damned, because... We will need to see it in the second task. Unfortunately, I touched it a little, but the icons were not badly damaged and their full number can be easily determined.
Now we will give the map an ancient look and greatly age it. To do this, soak our map in tea and dry it.
Let's soak our map.
After about 2 hours, I pulled out the map pieces and transferred them to sheets to dry.
This is what we end up with
Ready. We do the same procedures with all the remaining paper props, namely Morgan's letter, a bottle sticker with Morgan's letter, a wanted poster for Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Blackbeard's logbook.
Wanted poster for Captain Jack Sparrow
After aging
Pirate Birthday Invitation
After aging
Bottle sticker with Captain Morgan's letter
After aging
Making a bottle with Captain Morgan's letter
Take an empty bottle
And we remove all the stickers from it; the easiest way to do this is to soak it and then scrape everything off with a knife.
Great, the bottle for Captain Morgan's message is ready.
Now let's try our stickers on the bottle, I printed the sticker in two sizes, smaller and larger. Trying on a larger sticker
Trying on a smaller sticker
The second option looks better, so we will glue it.
We take regular glue - a pencil and coat the sticker thoroughly. There was also the idea of writing something on the back of the sticker, so that you would have to figure out how to tear it off and see what was written on it and somehow use it in the quest. Since the quest was made mainly for children, I abandoned this idea so that it would not turn out to be too difficult, but you can use this idea by making small changes to the quest.
We put a sticker on it, it looks great.
Now all that remains is to place Captain Morgan's message in it. We try on the height of the letter and the bottle, because... we will roll the letter into a tube along the sheet so that the letter can be taken out of the bottle without seriously injuring it.
We put the letter in the bottle, it’s a little big, you’ll have to tuck it up.
We take out the letter and fold it in about 3cm. and twist it again into a tube and place it in the bottle.
Great, now all that's left to do is make the plug. We take the paper on which the card parts were dried and roll it into a cork.
Great, let's plug her bottle.
Letter from Captain Morgan.
You can download Captain Morgan's letter in jpg file and doc. The doc version has two versions of the file. In the first, the font is smaller and the letter fits on one page. The second version has a slightly larger font for easier reading and fits on 2 sheets. We print first on one side, then on the other.
If you download doc files, do not forget to install the fonts that are in the list before editing.
Logbook of Captain Blackbeard.
This is what Captain Blackbeard's logbook looks like printed out. I printed it page by page, flipping the sheets over so I could print on both sides.
You can add blank pages at the end, because the journal could have been kept for more than one year.
At the end we fasten the magazine with a stapler, Captain Blackbeard's logbook is ready. It can also be aged and the edges scorched. If you cover the stapled area with a cut-out strip of paper, it will look better.
Black Mark.
It's simple, print and cut out. On the back we write a spell "shaman's banana"
Milk on the map.
We write with milk on the card so that the message can be revealed by holding the card over the fire.
Here, too, everything is very simple, pour a little milk and, dipping a match or toothpick, write on the map the place where the gift lies. After that, let the milk dry and that’s it.
That seems to be all :) If you have any questions about this quest, write to me on VKontakte
What would it be without a treasure map? To make this exciting holiday memorable, make a treasure map with your child - it's not difficult at all!
We need:
- A4 size sheet of paper
- Strong tea brew (you can use strong coffee)
- Pencils, felt-tip pens
Step 1
Take a piece of paper. Size doesn't matter much - it's up to you. Tear off the edges of the paper to give the card a more distressed look.
Step 2
Make a thick ball of paper, in this case you will get more realistic folds.
Photo: ourdailychocolate.blogspot.com
Step 3
Brew several tea bags into a shallow dish. Place a sheet of paper so that the tea leaves completely cover it on all sides. Leave for a few minutes.
Photo: ourdailychocolate.blogspot.com
Step 4
Carefully drain the tea leaves and dry the future card with a hairdryer.
Photo: ourdailychocolate.blogspot.com
Step 5
When the map has dried, draw the necessary objects and clues on the map using pencils and felt-tip pens.
Photo: ourdailychocolate.blogspot.com
Step 6
When you finish drawing the map, you can complicate the future one by dividing the map into several parts or leave it as is, folding the pirate treasure map with a ribbon.
They decided to give their niece a “pirate” birthday. With costumes and everything. What is the best gift for a pirate? Treasures, of course!
Due to the availability of free time and desperate melancholy from idleness, I decided to give a gift in the form of a treasure hunt map and the treasure itself.
I started with gold. What is a treasure without gold coins? I changed money at the bank for 10 rubles and began to clean it. The best option turned out to be a brush with not very stiff bristles. 
I was afraid that the coins might darken again, so I covered them with hairspray and carefully put them in storage until my birthday. 
Now I take up the map. I’m not a very creative person, so the map came to mind in parts over a couple of days, and in the evenings pieces were added to the overall picture.
The result was this: 
The stages of the treasure hunt are tied to my grandmother’s house (and garden), where my niece is staying.
Lake - tank 
Cave - abandoned ring for a well (let's turn it on its side) 
I'll tie one of the envelopes to the top of the crane's head. 
And finally, the sandbox as a desert. There may not be many stages, but whatever you had enough imagination for, that’s what happened.
So, after Photoshop, a printer and fingers instead of scissors, we got this card blank 
Colored a little with pencils 
I tried it on a piece. Happened. 
Now you can paint the whole thing. You will need coffee and a tray with sides (for convenience) 
I held it for 30-40 seconds. It was difficult to remove, as the leaf softened very quickly from the hot coffee. 
I blotted off the excess with a sponge. It can also be used to paint, so as not to immerse the entire sheet in liquid. As further experience has shown, a sponge is even better, because you can make the desired areas darker as needed. 
To speed up the process, I dried the sheet with an iron (between towels, which I don’t mind)
After drying, I burned a couple of holes with a lighter and singed the edges along the contour. 
In order not to immediately understand where the treasure is buried, the map needs to be divided into parts (the edges of the pieces were made darker) 
I made envelopes to pack the card parts.
Glued, wrinkled, painted with a sponge and dried with an iron 
For the spider in the pantry I decided to use an envelope with a picture of a spider on it. Well, I didn’t forget about “his eyes glow in the darkness,” and painted his eyes with luminescent face painting (felt-tip pens would also work, but I didn’t find them).
There is no light in the granny’s closet (and there never was), so to find the spider you will need a flashlight, and not just a simple one, but an ultraviolet one (or you didn’t even know how to use it). In the darkness, the eyes glow brightly in its light. 
That's all. Pieces of the map are laid out in envelopes, and for the “cave” I concocted and cut out such a pirate so that he would “hold” one of the envelopes. 
The first part of the card will be given to the birthday girl as a gift.
In addition to the gold, glass balls and “gems” (for bracelets, etc.) will be added to the casket. 
Meanwhile, a treasure chest arrived from the shore of the Black Sea. Beautiful, but very fragile (made of plaster), probably only enough to dig it up. But old chests should be decayed, and treasures should be bright! 
That's all! Thanks to those who made it to the end and appreciated it.
