DIY: Treasure Map

For my work with children I always need new ideas to make up exciting stories. Usually I think of things I have at home anyway and how I can use them to do something by myself.
So one evening I ran out of ideas, so my boyfriend and me were brainstorming and finally he came up with this idea: Making a message in a bottle and creating a treasure map with the help of stamps. We really had fun to make the treasure map by painting and stamping pirates, ships and a treasure. Coffee, burned edges of the paper and crumpling the whole thing made the look complete. I haven't done that since my art class back then in school.

The task for the children was to "read" the message in the bottle. It can be read as a short comic-story about pirates on a ship who come to an island, where a monkey gives them a treasure map. In the end they went for treasure hunting. Afterwards the kids could "write" down their own messages or stories with the stamps. That was also an exercise to practice fine motor skills.
Of course I pretended to have found the message in the bottle at the beach and that the treasure map is really old and should not be touched, otherwise it would fall into a million pieces.