St. Patrick's Day - 2026

 

You all know that St. Patrick's Day has always been one of my very favorite holidays.  I love putting together my rainbow/leprechaun scavenger hunt with clues using ciphers & codes.  My kids love it & it has progressively gotten more & more difficult as the kids get older.  It's harder finding codes & ciphers they can't break.  They once again did amazing at their sleuthing & the whole day was a ton of fun.

The first clue was on the Lucky Charms. I used an arrow cipher with the words "Start at top left" on it.  They had to figure out what things in the house could be used to hide something using arrows. . . 

⬇️⬇️⬇️➡️⬆️⬆️⬅️⬇️➡️⬇️⬇️⬅️⬆️⬆️➡️⬆️⬆️

It was my dresser in my room.  They started at the top left drawer & followed the cipher to my sock drawer where they found the orange piece & their next clue.

The clue was "The cards, the cards, the cards will tell!"

Inside the bag was a deck of playing cards & a blacklight.

I had taken all the clubs in the deck of cards, put them in numerical order, & wrote on each one in invisible ink (only seen with a black light) "Mom Desk Drawer."  This one took them a while.  They were shining the black light on the actual face of the cards rather than the back.  Canyon finally saw a glimmer of a letter by accident & then told them to turn them over.  They shined the light until they picked out all the cards with letters on them, then realized they were all clubs & put them in order to decipher the code.

They ran to my craft desk & found the yellow piece.  But they couldn't read the next clue until after school & work.

This bag had "Taste the Rainbow" game inside so the kids got to roll die trying to get doubles.  If they got doubles, they had to put on some oven mitts & use 2 butter knives to try to open up & eat starburst candies.  It was hilarious.  Craiger kept getting lucky just as others would finally get the starburst unwrapped.  It never failed, he'd all of a sudden roll a double & get to eat their candy.

I used the tap code to leaden to our next clue. . . 
34-51-15-33 = The Oven

Before we got too much into our next clue & game, we had our "Green Dinner" which the kids always look forward to.

Taya got home from work & was able to join us for the next game. . . her favorite: "Don't Eat Pete!"

They all played that until the sour skittles felt like they were burning through their tongues, then they deciphered the next clue. . . 

It was written in the Runic Alphabet & led to the antique writing desk in the hallway.

This contained the rainbow dice game I got last year & all the kids enjoyed rolling their rainbows.

The next clue was hard.  It was a QR code that lead them to an audio of morse code that I made.  It led to the word "Curtain."  I was super surprised at how quickly Craiger could pull apart each letter of morse code.  To me, they all blend together & sound the same, but he could hear it VERY well.

They found the rainbow piece & the clue which instructed us to make some shamrock shakes.

The last clue included a complex, multi-step math equation that all 4 kids worked together on.  The answer was the number #230.  They found a diary inside the bag that had a combination of #230 & when they opened up the diary, I used the dice code in invisible ink to lead them to underneath Craiger's bed where the treasure was.

It was a super fun day.

It's always SO rewarding to know that something you did as a mom stuck with your kids.  Lorien sent me a series of pictures throughout the day of the St. Patrick's Day rainbow treasure hunt she put together for Elijah for their first St. Patrick's Day as a married couple.

She had the hidden rainbow pieces, clues in code, shamrock shakes, & more.  She was SO excited.  I love these kids of mine.  Aren't they so cute?

Happy St. Patrick's Day Everyone!