Party Favor Hunt!

I am continuing posts on keeping children active and academic on spring break while keeping you sane. I love doing this activity. It not only rids my home of useless toys (my favorite part) but gets my kids to use the park in a fresh way and even helps to make new friends!

Today my friend's daughter celebrated her 3rd birthday. It was a Strawberry Shortcake theme. Each little girl left with a Strawberry Shortcake sun hat. These hats are one of the best and most useful party favors my child has ever come home with. My daughter looks adorable and I don't have to keep another useless cheap toy that will be broken in 5 seconds. Not so many parents can be so clever to give such a cute party gift, I know I'm not. I have definitely been guilty of the 99 cent store special. So what to do with all the cheap chachkas? Why not along with your Easter Egg Hunt or search for the Passover Afikomen, have a party favor hunt! Round up all those little toys, have your child make a list of all the items, make copies for each participating child, go to the park and get the hunt started. If your children can't read you can take pictures and print them on paper. Bring items to any local park. Ask friends to join the hunt or make new friends by inviting other kids in the playground to participate. One kid can hide all the items (if they are skilled enough they can write down where they hid all the items) and all the other kids can find them or you can hide them for the kids. Make sure you discuss with your child before hand that this is a great way to spring clean and that it is important to know by doing this fun activity they must be willing to lose these toys and/or give them away to friends that find them. In my experience, kids forget where they stash the toys and other kids just take them before they are found so make sure that there is nothing your kids are really attached to.

In the end, your child will have cleaned out the chachkas, shared with their friends, counted items, written and read a list, participated in a group and had fun. It's educational and fun, what could be better?

Happy Passover, Happy Easter, Happy Hunting!