Take a big piece of paper and put a giant red X on it. This X goes on the floor in the middle of the room and an unknown reward written on a small piece of paper goes underneath (don’t let them see this part). The reward should be something of particular interest to the mates involved in the adventure (this promotes auto-participation in the next adventure, of which there will surely be one). Everyone gets to pick a pirate name of course and they must speak in their best pirate voices throughout the entire adventure. If they have pirate dress-up clothes – by all means let them dress for the occasion!

All of the items around the ship(room) that are causing the ship’s deck to be a wreck are picked up and placed on the big red X. I mean everything from the clothes to stuffed animals to coloring books and so on gets piled on this X. Once the pile is complete – the mates look around the room and put away any remaining debris hanging around.

Now it’s time to get to the bottom of the pile and find out what is under that big red X! This is when you let the mates know there is treasure under that red X and they can’t see what it is until all the items in the pile are put in their proper place and the red X can be lifted. They will be scooting around the room like little deckhands in a hurry. If you have any pirate songs on CD play those too!

Side note: make sure the reward is something that can be redeemed fairly quickly after the task has been completed. Not trying to promote instant gratification but for this tip – the quicker the better on the reward end. Total prep time is about 4 minutes to get this rolling.

This little gem also works well with a cowboy theme -YEEHAAA MATES!

TKMate