This is our version of an old-school Easter Egg Hunt, but you can make it fit any holiday or random theme. We post spring-ish items (Easter Bunny, Tulips, Easter Eggs, Robins, Sandals, etc.) around the school in places that take more than a casual glance to see, but not so hard that no one will ever see them. We create riddle-esque clues to point Scavenger Hunters in the right direction so they can find the Creature and snap a selfie with the picture and then we have our Hunters tag their pictures on the various Social Platforms we use (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram).
Every selfie (one selfie per item), is worth a ticket in our basket raffle. (This year we had four baskets.) The most challenging part of this event is writing your hunt’s clues. Your clues need to be unique to your campus. People like to solve puzzles and riddles, so have some fun and make up some of your own. Make sure that you confirm all your clues. The first year we ran this, our Advisor assumed the “giant shoe” was still on display in the basement and the shoe had been removed the night before the contest started to get the display case ready for a new awards display! It just meant that some people who remembered the giant shoe, knew where to look and others couldn’t figure it out, but we gave out hints for that clue if people asked!
We created a handout with the rules and clues and turned it into a poster. We posted them around the school the night before the contest began. We made announcements, posted to socials, and shared information with the student body.
Who: Open to the student body and staff. This year our staff advisor created a second, more challenging course just for Student Council to play along. The competition was fierce and we had our own little Spring Fling at the end of the day.
Where: All over campus. We plant our pictures anywhere that is a common space. We make sure not to post any of the item images anywhere that would be locked or unavailable to the student body (so we didn’t put anything in a classroom or space that was locked at the end of the day). We were also very cautious about not putting our images up where pictures should not be being taken (ie. bathrooms or changerooms!).
When: We did this in the Spring because we thought of it as an Egg Hunt, but you could really do it at any time of the year or in conjunction with any seasonal celebration. We may do something like this for Valentine’s Day next year.
Why: This event has lots of awesome outcomes. First, you increase awareness of your social media presence. We offered additional opportunities to snap selfies by posting new clues or new challenges that were only available via our social media streams. We also gave people a free ticket for showing us they had followed us on social media so they could walk up to our school store, show us they had followed us and we entered them into the draw (keep a record of names so you don’t ‘re-enter’ someone who has already received their freebie).
The second outcome was we had lots of great fun “selfies” that we could share with the Yearbook. We had names so we were able to confirm with people that it was okay to share their pictures. This was a fun event and we had people participate in this event that we had never seen get involved in anything before.
This event can be adjusted to a virtual event. Your clues have to be places that the students have access to at home, so have fun with the riddles!
Lori Armstrong H. B. Beal Secondary, London