You don't always need to buy your child a new toy to attract his attention. Sometimes it’s worth showing a little imagination and putting in a little effort to come up with an interesting game that can interest the most picky kids. One such undertaking could be searching for treasure using a treasure map. This kind of entertainment can keep not only one adventurer busy for a long time, but also a large friendly company of treasure hunters. Today’s article will discuss how to draw a treasure map in several ways.
Required accessories
In order to draw a believable treasure map, you will need to stock up on some important items, these are:
- album sheet;
- colored pencils or markers;
- lighter or matches;
- rope or thick thread;
- "treasures"
All subjects should be discussed in order.
Lighter, rope and pencils
So, the album sheet is the future map. Its size depends on the preferences, imagination and desires of the painter. By the way, how to draw a treasure map and where to hide the treasure on the diagram will also be decided by him. Colored pencils, which can be replaced with felt-tip pens, markers or paints (depending on what the child likes to use most), will help give the creation a unique color. A lighter or matches can artificially age the album sheet: burnt spots will add mystery to the masterpiece. Well, a rope or thick thread will be needed so that when you roll the finished card into a roll, you can tie it and fasten it. Of course, the most important thing is the treasures that will be hidden. This can be any edible goodies, candies or favorite treats of the particular child for whom the card is being drawn up. You can use small toys or a set of stickers. In principle, any little thing that comes to hand is suitable for this. All these attributes will bring the resulting masterpiece closer to ideal.
How to draw a treasure map with your own hands: a few simple ways
The first method is for the parent.
To begin with, it is worth deciding on the place where the long-awaited reward will await the “treasure hunters”. A package of delicious cookies, fruit or any other delicacy is quite suitable for her. Having discovered what was hidden, the kids will not only be happy, but will also enjoy a snack. Once the location has been chosen, you can get down to business. Since drawing a treasure map for children is quite simple, even those who haven’t picked up a pencil for a long time can cope with this task.
Stages
How we will draw the map:
- If the treat is hidden in an apartment or house, you should start the route from the farthest point and lead the children to success as confusingly as possible. The more complex the trail, the more interesting it is to look for treasure.
- Place significant objects located in the apartment on the map. If you can’t boast of creative abilities at all, you can simply sign these items.
- Aging the card by burning the edges with matches or a lighter. For greater plausibility, you can burn a hole in the center.
- Roll up the resulting masterpiece, tie it with a rope and throw it to your child. The result will not take long to arrive. Children's thirst for adventure will draw them into the game at lightning speed.
The second method involves joint creativity.
This option is suitable for an upcoming children's party, for example, if the child has a birthday with invited guests. It’s worth doing everything the same as in the first method, just giving free rein to your child’s imagination. Let your child design his own unique route leading to the goal and decorate the drawing as he sees fit. Explain to your child that the success or failure of treasure hunting will depend on how you draw a treasure map: the more accurately you indicate the route and indicate important details, the easier it will be to move towards the goal.
Play and creativity are integral parts of childhood development, and if they can be combined, supported by delicious food and gifts, then this is a huge benefit for the younger generation.
My son was given an interesting task at school - to make a treasure map. Now I’ll tell you how we did it and what we got.
To make our map look like an ancient one, we decided to age the paper. Here's how it's done. You need to brew strong tea, about 4-5 teaspoons per half liter jar. Cover with a lid and let steep until cool.
Then crumple the A4 piece of paper, making a lump. Put it in a jar with tea leaves for 20 - 30 minutes, then catch it and carefully place it on a tray. Let the paper dry and iron it with an iron.
I then trimmed the edges of the leaf to create a ragged edge effect.
Well, they also burned it over a candle. Slightly - a little smoked. It turned out very believable.
Then they drew a map with a simple pencil and then colored it with a brown pencil.
After that we made a pirate seal.
To do this, take brown plasticine, a textured bottle cap, a string, and transparent nail polish. You need to form a pancake out of plasticine and “slam” a rope into it, using a cork to squeeze out a design on the plasticine.
Then coat our seal with varnish and let it dry well.
The result was a real old pirate treasure map.
I recently found a site on the Internet DrQuest.rf, where they offer a very interesting scenario for a birthday or party for children on the theme of pirates and treasure hunting. This is an exciting quest for kids with riddles and puzzles. The pirate map is divided into parts, and to find each part you need to complete a specific task. Children get acquainted with Morse code, sea knots, types of ships, etc. Look - very interesting. Here is the link . And Jack Sparrow himself gives the kids tasks :)! Example video:
Treasure search tasks for children are one of the best options for children's birthday games. Any children's party or meeting with a child's friends involves games in motion. First of all, the treasure of pirates comes to mind - this scenario of the game involves searching for treasure for children in nature.
Searching for treasure using notes for children
The main advantage of such entertainment is searching for treasure using notes for children; such a puzzle usually does not require a leader, and even if some competitions offer his participation, any parent can cope with this role without preparation.
The goal of the competition is to find a treasure, a way: to get the notes and complete the tasks indicated there. When each stage is won, a new note is awarded with information about the next cache. 
Treasure hunting for children involves a whole scenario. You can print out a map with the main treasure, divide it into 8-10 parts, and hide them in different places, write tips for finding them.
Turn on your imagination: treasure hunting tasks for children require variety.
Can you suggest go hunting: display pins with drawings of animals glued to them, or hang the “faces” of predators among the trees and bushes.
A similar competition is the destruction of enemies (prepared pictures or dummies). 
If you want to surprise your children, come up with something original. For example, in a note write to your child buy the product at your nearest store related to the competition scenario:
bananas are for pirates,
barbecue sauce - for hunters,
Make an agreement with the seller of this store in advance by giving him the following note.
An alternative to interconnected notes could be a treasure hunt for children using photo report, the scenario in this case will need to be worked out separately. Hide the keyword riddle clues in different places and take pictures of them. In the house it is better to take macro photography; in nature, on the contrary, distant angles are more suitable. Where to hide notes at the dacha? Under a pebble, in a cart, under a bicycle, there are just so many ideas!
Treasure hunting for children may have a special scenario containing coded messages. Here is an example of a scheme for one of the encoding options created using the Russian alphabet. 
If you are organizing a holiday for kids, the search for treasure using notes for children can be based on fairy tale theme. The presenter can say the key words of the fairy tale, and the participants will guess, or you can show key objects from fairy tales, for example, the key from Pinocchio, the slipper from Cinderella, the apple from Snow White. Children must guess the names of fairy tales.
And finally, another interesting idea is to invite children to come up with and work out a competition for adults.
It is important to take into account that the tasks should not be too difficult, because children get upset and lose enthusiasm if they don’t succeed for a long time. And if the competitions are too simple, they can quickly get boring for the picky children's audience.
"Fire will help you"
What could this mean? If you yourself haven’t guessed (that you need to hold part of the card over the fire, because there is an inscription written in milk on it), then you can enter the words “ Fire will help you" as an answer in the level
And Captain Jack Sparrow will laugh at the fact that he slipped you empty parts of the map, but then he will still tell you what it’s all about.
Wow! Have you completed all the tasks and found the last part of the map? Ha-ha-ha, but it’s empty! Okay, okay, it was a bad joke. Hold the last part of the map over the fire and maybe it will help you.
Aha, now there can be no doubt, you need to hold the last part of the card over the fire and the words will appear.
In our example, “WORD” appeared on the map, but you will have to write the place where the gift is.
As you can see, after the card was held over the fire (be careful not to burn the entire card:) a word appeared on the card, indicating the place where the hidden gift lay. Quest finished :)
The demo quest can be completed here.
Now let's look at the equipment that was used in the quest.
Inventory, complete list.
1. Pirate invitations (10 pcs.) , , , , , , , , ,
7. Blackbeard's Logbook
8. (download) Treasure map
9. (font 1, font 2, font 3, font 4) Fonts used in Captain Morgan's letter and in the logbook, in case you want to make your own changes to the text. (before editing text files, make sure you have installed these fonts)
10. (download) Download everything in one archive
Now let's figure out how to make this inventory.
How to make a pirate map
First, download the map file and print it. This is what the original map file looks like.
How to divide a map into 6 parts
I do not recommend printing the map in A4 format, but printing it a little larger (at least one and a half sheets of A4), then each part of the map will be large enough. This is the map I got (one and a half sheets of A4). If this format is not convenient, print it on two sheets of A4 (the map itself will print on two sheets)
As you can see, the map is filled with different places like “Storm Island” or “Dead Man’s Bay”; it also contains icons of cannons, rum, the Jolly Roger flag, an anchor, a black mark, a cross, a steering wheel and a chest. This is also done so that in the quest you can make a reference to the map to find out, for example, “the number of cannons in Fort Hope” or “find out the number of chests in Flint Mountain”.
The middle of the map is empty, this is done so that in this middle, if you want, you can schematically draw a plan of the area or apartment with a designated place where the gift is hidden. In our case, this place will be empty.
This is what the map looked like after I burned it a little around the edges. Be careful, don’t get carried away and burn a hole in the map like I did :) But since there are no vital places on the map in this place, I left it and didn’t redo the map.
At first I drew a plan of our apartment on the map, but then I abandoned the idea of using it in the quest, but I left the plan just in case, it did not interfere with the quest.
This is what the map looks like after dividing it into several parts. It is important that the first part of the map contains a complete (not cut) island of the damned, because... We will need to see it in the second task. Unfortunately, I touched it a little, but the icons were not badly damaged and their full number can be easily determined.
Now we will give the map an ancient look and greatly age it. To do this, soak our card in tea and dry it.
Let's soak our map.
After about 2 hours, I pulled out the map pieces and transferred them to sheets to dry.
This is what we end up with
Ready. We do the same procedures with all the remaining paper props, namely Morgan's letter, a bottle sticker with Morgan's letter, a wanted poster for Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Blackbeard's logbook.
Wanted poster for Captain Jack Sparrow
After aging
Pirate Birthday Invitation
After aging
Bottle sticker with Captain Morgan's letter
After aging
Making a bottle with Captain Morgan's letter
Take an empty bottle
And we remove all the stickers from it; the easiest way to do this is to soak it and then scrape everything off with a knife.
Great, the bottle for Captain Morgan's message is ready.
Now let's try our stickers on the bottle, I printed the sticker in two sizes, smaller and larger. Trying on a larger sticker
Trying on a smaller sticker
The second option looks better, so we will glue it.
We take regular glue - a pencil and coat the sticker thoroughly. There was also this idea of writing something on the back of the sticker, so that you would have to figure out how to tear it off and see what was written on it and somehow use it in the quest. Since the quest was made mainly for children, I abandoned this idea so that it would not turn out to be too difficult, but you can use this idea by making small changes to the quest.
We put a sticker on it, it looks great.
Now all that remains is to place Captain Morgan's message in it. We try on the height of the letter and the bottle, because... we will roll the letter into a tube along the sheet so that the letter can be taken out of the bottle without seriously injuring it.
We put the letter in the bottle, it’s a little big, you’ll have to tuck it up.
We take out the letter and fold it in about 3cm. and twist it again into a tube and place it in the bottle.
Great, now all that remains is to make the plug. We take the paper on which the card parts were dried and roll it into a cork.
Great, let's plug her bottle.
Letter from Captain Morgan.
You can download Captain Morgan's letter in jpg file and doc. The doc version has two versions of the file. In the first, the font is smaller and the letter fits on one page. The second version has a slightly larger font for easier reading and fits on 2 sheets. We print first on one side, then on the other.
If you download doc files, do not forget to install the fonts that are in the list before editing.
Logbook of Captain Blackbeard.
This is what Captain Blackbeard's logbook looks like printed out. I printed it page by page, flipping the sheets over so I could print on both sides.
You can add blank pages at the end, because the journal could have been kept for more than one year.
At the end, we fasten the magazine with a stapler, Captain Blackbeard’s logbook is ready. It can also be aged and the edges scorched. If you cover the stapled area with a cut-out strip of paper, it will look better.
Black mark.
It's simple, print and cut out. On the back we write a spell "shaman's banana"
Milk on the map.
We write with milk on the card so that the message can be revealed by holding the card over the fire.
Here, too, everything is very simple, pour a little milk and, dipping a match or toothpick, write on the map the place where the gift lies. After that, let the milk dry and that’s it.
That seems to be all :) If you have any questions about this quest, write to me on VKontakte
In modern culture, not a single canonical image of a pirate can do without such an attribute as a treasure map. It is thanks to their wealth that pirates have received a fair share of their popularization. A free sea wolf who has been in the thick of it and acquired hundreds or thousands of gold coins and secretly hid them on one of the islands of the archipelago simply cannot help but arouse interest.. And it doesn’t matter that most of these treasure stories are just myths, because even a well-thought-out fiction, set out on the pages of a book, can win the hearts of many readers; Stevenson, one of the first to mention a treasure map in his work, is a prime example of this.
Place marked with a cross on maps
Pirate maps with a cross marking the place where the treasure is buried are one of the most famous pirate attributes, but this is a complete fiction, the invention of which is owed to Robert Louis Stevenson and his. His stepson, Lloyd Osborne, wrote: “Armed with paints, I painted the island that I had previously painted. Stevenson came in as I was finishing, and leaned over my shoulder with genuine interest and love for everything I was doing. Soon he was working out individual details of the map and giving them names. I will never forget the excitement that gripped me when the skeleton of the Skeletons, the Spyglass Hill, appeared on it, and the heart-squeezing delight when three red crosses were drawn one after another! But I was even more delighted when he wrote “Treasure Island” in the upper right corner. Oh, what a magical fairy tale it will be!” - I exclaimed.” Over the next three days, Stevenson wrote the first chapters of this work, which became a classic pirate novel.
Pirate treasure chests
The treasure chest present in all pirate novels is just a tribute to the legends. Yes, the pirates came across jewelry, but mostly the loot was much more prosaic. Pirates usually took what they could eat, drink, or sell quickly. Other “treasures” prized by pirates included good clothing, spices, bales of cotton, corned beef, weapons, ropes, and slaves. All this, of course, could not be hidden in a chest and buried in reserve.
