My daughter turned 10
this year, and to celebrate her first “double digit” birthday, my wife
and I hoped to throw her a party that she’d really love, something she
had never tried before. Not an easy challenge. After 10 years of her own
and others’ parties, she’s been a lucky participant in a lot of festive
occasions.
Our
big hunt ended with a big hunt. For years, I had heard that a company
called Watson Adventures had taken the concept of a scavenger hunt and
applied it in fun, surprising, crazy ways, using the city as the
landscape for all sorts of adventures for adults and kids. Whether their
hunts are themed by glamour, grit, mystery, history, fright or
education, they all sounded like a lot of fun. A sampling of their
family highlights include The Secrets of Central Park Scavenger Hunt,
The Wizard School Scavenger Hunt (at the Museum of Metropolitan Art),
The Fright at the Museum Scavenger Hunt (at the Museum of Natural
History), and The Wild Wildlife Scavenger Hunt (at the Bronx Zoo). Great stuff, no?
Watson
offers regularly-scheduled public hunts and customized private hunts.
In the kids’ realm, they work with schools and camps, and do parties as
elaborate as big bar/bat mitvah groups, or as cozy as my daughter’s
celebration—her plucky younger brother and her six friends joined my
wife and I for The Art Attack Scavenger Hunt at the Met.
Here’s
how it worked. A very pleasant supervisor from Watson divided us into
two teams, my wife and I being the team leaders. We were each given a
list of 20 clues to solve, one team starting from the front of the list,
the other at the back. This way the teams wouldn’t see much of each
other in the course of the hunt—until we all reconvened an hour and a
half later to see which team had answered the most questions correctly.
The
bottom line: Never have I seen young children so enthused about being
at museum! In pursuit of eternal glory, we explored an amazing amount of
cultural riches: Medieval armor, Impressionist art, Mayan jewelry,
American sculpture, Egyptian tombs, the works.
And
thank goodness my daughter’s team (led by my wife), won. But really we all
did.
For more about Watson Adventures, visit watsonadventures.com.
For more fantasy birthday ideas for every child and budget, click here.
Photo: The author’s daughter (center, in baseball hat) with friends and family at her Art Attack Scavenger Hunt birthday party.
