Last week was Ephraim’s seventh birthday!

Honestly, I always get a little teary on his birthday when I think about how we missed the first year and a half of his life but I’m so thankful that we’ve been able to spend the last five and a half together.

Since we weren’t doing a party on his birthday (we’ll do one when we can) I wanted to make the day a little more special and so I decided he would find his gift at the end of an escape room/scavenger hunt.

I made a video of his birthday but I also wanted to write out how we did the escape room/scavenger hunt for those that prefer that.

Also, I did a little birthday interview with him, I want to do this every year because I think it will be so neat to look back on, I just wish I would have started sooner!

 

 

Here’s the birthday video, you can watch them solve the escape room:

 

 

Check out all the escape rooms I’ve been making for the kids.

Also, here’s our adoption story – the journey to Ephraim.

 

Birthday Escape Room/Scavenger Hunt

 

I wanted to keep the escape room simple for me to make but have the clues so they took the kids awhile to work out. It’s kind of annoying when you spend all this time working on clues and they just fly through them. Plus, if you make them harder you need to make less clues!

 

 

CLUE #1

For this clue we found a riddle online but I didn’t want it to just be a simple riddle they could figure out right away so we switched up some of the words and underlined them and they kids needed to work out that they need to find different words for the underlined ones – words that rhymed.

I was surprised they took as long with this clue as they did, we needed to give a decent amount of hints but I would prefer to have to give hints rather than make the clue too easy.

This clue led them to the kitchen table where we had tucked the next clue up in the leaf that is stored under our table.

 

 

 

CLUE #2

Jared made up the second clue. He wrote a paragraph that didn’t make a whole lot of sense but he wrote it out in all different colors and the kids needed to figure out that the colors mattered and the orange words spelled out: it’s in the dryer.

This one took them a few minutes but I thought it would have taken them longer.

 

 

CLUE #3

The third clue was a poem I copied out of a Shel Silverstein book. I made all the letters lowercase except the ones that spelled out C-R-I-B, originally I was going to leave it just like that but Jared didn’t think they’d see it so I bolded the letters but writing over them a few times.

This clue they ended up figuring out pretty much right away.

 

 

THE CODE & GIFT

Each of the clues ended up leading them not only to the next clue but also to one other thing. One clue gave them a code maker, one a code breaker and the last one gave them the code they needed to solve.

Once they had the code figured out it read: Terror of the Seas which is a quote from Pippi Longstocking, a book Ephraim has listened to literally dozens of times.

When he found the book on the shelf he opened it and found a key which after some prodding found out it went with the workbench in the garage, so off they went and he found his present!

 

 

We got him a portable electric drum kit which he’s already picking up really quickly!

While this whole world-wide pandemic thing changed what he may have wanted his birthday to look he still had a lot of fun and enjoyed his day.

 

Any ideas on themes for future escape rooms? You can check out all the ones I’ve made so far here.