Buried Treasure: DIY Craft & Game!

We’ve been planning a family vacation to the beach for some time.  My oldest son who is almost four has been SUPER excited about this trip.  ”When are we going to the beach? How many days? When will I get to see my cousins? Will there be big waves? Will Grammy be there?” The list of questions went on and on.  When he got tired of asking new questions, he just repeated the old ones.  Needless to say, the anticipation was already built in.

Instead of putting duct tape over his mouth (which I have been tempted to do on many a time), I encouraged him to put his energy and excitement into making a game that we could play on the beach… Buried Treasure.

It goes like this:

Stage one: Rock Collecting.  Once your children get to that nagging stage of the beach anticipation, begin collecting rocks for your Buried Treasure Game.  Challenge your children to find rocks of various sizes, shapes and colors.

Stage two: Crafting.  Once your rocks are collected, let your kid go nuts with painting them.  We used standard tempera paint.  Trust me, it doesn’t have to be perfect.  Let them dry on wax paper, and them number them randomly.  I used one of those giant sharpie markers, but a paint pen probably would’ve been clearer to read.

Stage three: Make the flags.  This one’s for you momma (or dad).  For the flags, I cut bamboo skewers in half with garden shears, then used shipping labels to make the “flag.” I trimmed them to triangles, marked them with an “X” , wrapped them in clear packing tape, trimmed the tape to fit the triangles, and Voila.  ”X” marks the spot.

Stage four: Beach fun. Let your kids bury the treasure (painted rocks) in the sand and have them mark each rock with a flag.  After each rock is buried and marked, have them go and uncover the treasure.  The kid that collects the rocks that tally to the highest number of points “wins.”

Why I loved this game: We had pre-trip crafting and family fun, Graham and the other children were kept fully entertained on the beach (while I got to read a book and sip a beer… jealous?), and we also got to work on our math skills as we added up the numbers on our rocks.  We had kids between the ages of 3 and 8 that all seemed to enjoy our Buried Treasure game.

Heading to the beach soon? Be sure to give this a go.  I’ve also written a “tutorial” (if that’s what we want to call this) on Sand Darts and Beach Bowling too.  Hey, if it gets you more time to relax on the beach, isn’t it worth it?

Happy Summer Vacations,