As they’ve gotten older, the kids have turned the holidays into 10 minutes of frenzied activity and then a feast of chocolate for breakfast. Last Easter, I attempted to slow them down a bit through the use of technology.
Once again Pinterest was my guiding light – from this pin – leading to this blog post http://blog.bitsofeverything.com/2014/04/smart-phone-easter-egg-hunt-older-kids.html –
What you’ll need:
- A piece of technology hardware – iPod, iPad or tablet, iPhone or other smart phone
- A QR reader app – I tend to use RedLaser
- A QR code generator (if you don’t use the clues in the original blog post) – this is the site I used – http://www.qr-code-generator.com
- A printer
- A plan
- How many eggs? What are you clues to where you’re hiding them?
Quite frankly the plan is the hardest part. In the original blog post – she uses the QR codes to link back to clues in images in her website. My tech savvy oldest would have busted the easter bunny for sure on this, so I needed to generate my own codes and clues.
If you aren’t familiar with QR codes – they look like a series of dots inside of a square. And basically that’s what they are – the QR code reader reads them and translates (think of a bar code in a different shape). The result can lead you to a website or text or any number of things depending on the complexity. To keep it simple, I’m just using text.
Step 1. – Come up with your clues. ( Number them.
Step 2. – Go to your QR code generator. Type in your text and generator your code. Save the code image with a name (and a number) – such as Clue1. Repeat until you’ve coded all your clues.
Step 3. – Print your clues. In our case, we started with a letter from the Easter Bunny explaining the hunt and what they needed to do to find their clues. Then the other clues (qr codes) were printed separately.
Step 4. – Hide your clues. The clues fold up nicely inside of the eggs and the code should be able to handle a few small creases.
Helpful Hints
1) Watch your locations and your clues. I have two kids and I managed to make two clues arrive too close to each other nearly creating a snafu. Luckily along with the note for the kids, the Easter Bunny conveniently left a note for mom just in case a code broke so no eggs would be left unfound.
2) Test your clues. Before hiding the clues, double check that you have the right words showing up at the right time.
3) Pre-download your QR code reader. My kids are old enough to download on their own safely but just in case…
neverbeingbored 