stampin4fun: An Amazing Race

It's March break. This means there's three kids lounging around the house NOT going to school. I'm also doing the solo parent thing this week since Kevin is off in Nicaragua on a missions trip.

We are thankful that the team arrived safely and are keeping busy with all kinds of activities like construction, teacher training at the school, helping with the feeding program and more.

To see photos and read about the team's activities you can go to the blog:
www.ccccnic.blogspot.com

I told the kids that I had planned something fun for them to do on one day during March Break. I made up an Amazing Race. I had various Clues that led to different locations all over the city and at each location there was a specific challenge.
I had a whole prize system at the end and everything. To be honest I was pretty impressed with myself over the whole thing. If you want to do it, I'd be happy to share because I copied lots from the internet and just modified it to make it work for our city.

I made up all these envelopes with the clues and challenges: (hooray for my alphabet stamp sets!)

To be honest it wasn't really a race since my three kids worked together in one team and they weren't racing against anyone. I told them they had to co-operate together to complete different challenges and that they would get a cash reward based on their completion of the challenges and other measures. I know it might seem silly to give my own kids a cash reward but I figured if I were to take them all to the zoo or the Science Centre it would cost a big chunk of cash AND I would have to fight March break crowds.
This was probably cheaper and wouldn't give me a headache.

Here's an example of a clue:

Stop HANGING around and SWING into action.

Go to a place where you found childhood satisfaction.

Don’t let your game SLIDE, stop PLAYING around,

Hurry and get over to this fun loving GROUND.

When the kids showed up at the location, I would be there to hand them the challenge for that location and also the clue to find the next location. I would then drive off to the next location to meet them.

See, this was the Challenge at the playground:

Take a trip to memory lane, it is time to PLAY! Complete all of these fun playground challenges to receive your next clue! Don’t forget to take pictures!

Everyone must slide down the slide backwards, face first, and then all at once.
Each person takes turns pushing a team member on the swing and doing an underdog
Play one round of follow the leader around the entire playground.

as I said I can't take credit for these fun clues because I copied them off examples I saw on the internet.

I found it funny to meet the kids at different locations. I'd start off sitting at a location in my car confident that they would figure out the clue because I made them really easy. However, as the clock ticked away and they did not show up, I would start to get nervous and wonder where they were.

Intellectually I knew it could take them a long time to get to some of the check points because they would have had to take a bus but emotionally I worried about all sorts of things.

At one check point they showed up earlier than I expected because they ordered an UBER and got a drive! I guess they weren't interested in waiting an hour for the next bus.

Pit stops included a pet store where they had to find out facts on a certain pet, a japanese restaurant where they had to eat squid, a laundrymat where they had to put on oversized clothes. and the mall where they had to hug a mannequin.

Their photographic "proof" that they did the challenges were hilarious.