Advent treasure hunt clues for kids: 24 hiding spots and a clue for every day

ARLing s. r. o. · 9 October 2026

How the hunt works, day by day

The trick is that every card is hidden one day ahead. The clue on the Day 1 card points to the Day 1 spot, and that is where your child finds the first surprise together with the Day 2 card. Our routine looks like this:

1. Before December 1. Print the cards and cut out all 24. That takes about 20 minutes by our estimate; if you write the clues by hand, add the time for writing them.
2. On the evening of November 30. Hide the first small surprise and the Day 2 card at the Day 1 spot.
3. On December 1. Give your child the Day 1 card. Its clue leads to that spot.
4. Every evening after that. Hide a treat and the next card at the next day's spot. That takes a few minutes by our estimate.
5. On December 24. The last day is for everyone.

Keep your own list of where every card goes, and keep it where the children cannot see it. Our guide for grown-ups is a separate file for exactly that reason, and for every day it lists the spot, the room, what to hide and the answer to each code. With two or more children, let them take turns, each on their own days, or let everyone follow the clues for the youngest.

A surprise does not need to cost much. Our guide suggests stickers, a note, a small toy, a coloring page, or an activity such as cocoa together tonight.

24 hiding spots at child height, with a picture clue for each day

The plan below uses 24 of the 50 spots on our hiding spot menu, in an order where no room comes twice in a row. Every spot on the menu is at floor or child height, but homes differ: check each spot in your own home, and use the bread basket, the cereal box or the cookie tin only if your child can reach it without climbing. The sentence in the last column is a picture clue for ages 4 to 6: draw the object next to it, and a grown-up reads the sentence aloud.

If one of these spots does not exist in your home, swap it for one of the other 26 on our menu, and pick it from a different room than the day before, as the plan does:

• Bedroom: under the blanket at the foot of your bed, just under the edge of your bed, behind the books on the bottom shelf, inside your school backpack, in the nightstand drawer, folded inside your holiday sweater, on the floor behind your bedroom door.
• Entryway and closet: inside your winter hat, inside one of your shoes, under the doormat inside the front door.
• Living room: behind a small pillow on the couch, under the coffee table, inside a jigsaw puzzle box, tucked in the side of the armchair, under or inside the footrest, inside the piano bench, inside the family photo album.
• Kitchen and dining: under or next to the fruit bowl, between the napkins in the napkin holder, on the seat of a dining chair pushed under the table, under the dining table, inside your lunchbox.
• Playroom and study: in the building blocks bin, inside the play tent or blanket fort, in the desk drawer, in the basket of clean folded laundry.

Clues for three ages: pictures, rhymes and secret codes

Each child gets a clue that fits their age: a picture clue at 4 to 6, a rhyme riddle at 7 to 9 and a secret code at 10 to 12. The picture clues are in the table above. Here are three rhymes from our generator that you can copy:

• Under your pillow: “Every night it holds your head, / soft and puffy on your bed. / Lift it up and peek below, / your surprise is there, you know!”
• Inside a slipper: “Cozy, fuzzy, made for feet, / walking softly, nice and neat. / Two of us wait side by side, / in one of us a treat can hide.”
• Inside an empty cookie tin: “Round and shiny, with a lid, / something inside me has been hid. / Pop me open, there is a treat, / maybe something small and sweet.”

A secret code has two parts: an answer of a few words in capital letters, such as UNDER YOUR PILLOW or IN THE COOKIE TIN, and a key on the card, so the child can crack it alone. Here is the same answer in the three codes our hunt uses:

• Letter shift. Move every letter one place forward in the alphabet, so A becomes B: JO UIF DPPLJF UJO. The key on our card reads: “Every letter moved 1 step forward in the alphabet. Move each letter 1 step back to read where to look.”
• Mirror writing. Write the letters in reverse order: NIT EIKOOC EHT NI. The key reads: “Hold the card up to a mirror, or read it letter by letter from right to left.” On our printed cards every letter is also flipped, so the mirror shows normal writing.
• Number code. Write each letter as its place in the alphabet, join the numbers of a word with hyphens and put a slash between words: 9-14 / 20-8-5 / 3-15-15-11-9-5 / 20-9-14. The key reads: “Each number stands for a letter. Use the key: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, and so on. A slash ( / ) means a new word.”

Our generator picks the shift and the first number of the key anywhere from 1 to 5. If you write your own codes, change the key now and then in the same way.

What you need before December 1

• A printer, A4 or US Letter paper and scissors.
• Small surprises of your own, one for each day.
• Your list of the 24 days with the spot, the room, what to hide and the answer to each code, kept away from the children.
• A grown-up who can hide the next card every evening, because the hunt does not work without that.
• Something for the last day. Our sample Day 24 letter, from Holly the Elf, ends with one last mission: give someone in your family a big hug and thank them for something kind they did this year.

Skip the writing: a hunt with your children's names

If you would rather not write 24 clues, our personalized advent treasure hunt does it for you. You type the names and ages of 1 to 4 children aged 4 to 12 on the Etsy order page, and a few minutes after payment you download 24 clue cards with their names, a Day 24 letter and a separate guide for you, each in A4 and US Letter. It costs 13.90 € on Etsy; in the EU, Etsy adds local VAT and shows the final total before you pay.

It is a good pick if your children are different ages, because one hunt mixes picture clues, rhymes and codes, and if you are happy to print, cut out the cards and hide one surprise each evening. It is not the right pick if you want a printed calendar shipped to you, illustrated characters and a story on every page, or a language other than English, if nobody can hide the next card in the evening, or if your children are younger than 4 or older than 12. The surprises are not included, and nothing is shipped. Its texts and clues were created with the help of AI tools, and every page is drawn in code with no AI images.

We use the names and ages only to build the hunt. The files are deleted automatically 30 days after they are ready; if you order before December, they stay until at least December 27. See the personalized advent treasure hunt before you decide.

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