Indoor Fun for Bad-Weather Days
As kids get older, they start to ask for birthday parties that are a little out of the norm. When we celebrated Lucy’s 11th birthday recently, she asked to go to the mall with her friends.
Not knowing what kind of trouble a group of 11- and 12-year-old girls could get into at the mall, I took them there with a mission. Instead of just letting them loose, I decided to give them a task: a scavenger hunt.
Let me preface this by saying that not every mall appreciates a gaggle of girls running from store to store. So we had to be a little sly (and set some ground rules). But giving the girls a mission and a list of fun and crazy items to collect photos of was fun for them—and Molly and I had fun doing the hunt ourselves.
First, I came up with a list of fun things for the girls to find while they were at the mall. A red bag at a store, a perfume sample, etc. And then, because I didn’t want the girls to have to spend any money, I added photos that they needed to get. Someone carrying five shopping bags, someone doing a yoga pose in the window of a store, all of them wearing the same shirt.
I set a time limit for the list, giving them 45 minutes to pick up or take a photo of all the items on the list. I thought my list was pretty good and it would take them the whole time. But, they were quick and were able to get it done much faster.
The girls had a blast, but I would recommend a few precautions before having a scavenger hunt in your own mall.
- Make sure participants take care to follow mall and store rules.
- Be respectful of mall staff and security.
- Avoid shouting, running and cutting in lines.
In general, make sure no one makes a spectacle of themselves—you know how excited kids can get sometimes. It’s even fun to do the scavenger hunt with the kids, and it helps to keep them in line!
