Connecting with our Community - How to Create a Robot Hunt

My family needed a project. Nearly a month into social distancing, it was time to figure out a way to connect with the friends that we all missed desperately.

So, I recruited our two boys and my husband to create a robot hunt. I thought we could make some robots, hide them around our town, write some clues for the hidden robots, and share the Robot Scavenger Hunt with our friends. 

Turns out, it worked! Our friends and their families got outside, hunted down some robots, and shared photos with us along the way. We had such a great time doing it, I thought you might want to try it in your own community.

(Click HERE to download the Robot Hunt template for FREE.)

Here's how we put together our Robot Hunt.

First, we gathered some materials. We scoured the house for bits of junk (there was plenty of that), scraps of wood, nails, screws, and rope.

Then, we spent the good part of an afternoon building robots. It was so much fun! It was incredible to see how each robot seemed to get more creative or whimsical as the day went on.

Here are some of the things we used:
--- Wood - 2 x 4, 2 x 1, 1 x 1
--- Wooden dowels and PVC pipe
--- Hardware - screws, gears, nails
--- Small bits of things like golf tees, clothespins, paper clips, keys, buttons, beads

Tools
--- Drill
--- Hammer
--- Hot glue gun

We also labeled each robot with a number. We used an old set of leather punches. However, you could easily designate each robot by writing numbers on them, painting them different colors, or just letting their individually differentiate them.

By the end of the afternoon, we had 10 robots ready for the robot hunt.

The next day, we gathered the robots and took them to our village. We brought some rope and scissors to secure the robots in place. We also brought some paper to write down clues for each robot as we went. 

We hid the robots in a single "loop" around the village to make it manageable for our friends. However, we also hid one off of the beaten path as a BONUS.

Since we were conscious of germs, we made sure that all bots could be visible and no one would need to touch them to see the numbers or write a description. 

Oh, and since we have a canal in our town and bridges, you know that my boys were very into the idea of having one robot "bungee jump" off a bridge.

After we hid all the robots, we typed up the robot clues for our friends. 

We also included some directions for our friends. These included:

--- Where to begin the hunt. 

--- Places to write their "start" and "end" time.

--- A note about recording their answers.

--- Instructions to take a group selfie with at least one robot in the background (and who to share the selfie with - which was us, of course!)

--- A reminder not to touch the robots.

If you'd like to use the template we created, you can download it for FREE here. There are blanks so that you can customize it for your community.

This was the best part! Once the Robot Hunt was ready, we couldn't wait to share it with our friends. We placed the directions and clues in some of our friends' mailboxes. We texted photos of the hunt to some other friends. We even created a PDF that we could email to some other friends. 

Then, the photos and texts started rolling in. As our friends completed the hunt they sent photos of their papers and their cute faces with robots. They all commented on how much fun they had. 

Connecting with them made our hearts burst. It was so nice to "play" together - even remotely!

If this inspires you to put some robots around your town, we'd love to hear about it! Connect with us by...

• - Posting images on social media with #robothunt2020
• - Tagging @brainwavesinstruction
• - Emailing updates to marybeth@brainwavesinstruction.com
• - Adding comments and/or images to this blog post

Thanks so much for stopping by!

Mary Beth

P.S. If you're looking for another way to get creative these days, check out this "Watch and Write" video. Kids can watch a short video for creative writing inspiration. My sons helped me with this too!

P.P.S. Here's a quick photo of my boys, the dog, and I while we were hiding the robots.

Oh, and don't forget to grab the printable Robot Scavenger Hunt materials HERE.