As I loaded my daughter onto the school bus in March, I looked at other parents with envious eyes. My son had had his annual hospital operation the week before and we both still faced another two weeks of home-schooling.

I tried my best to bring a positive attitude to the home-school desk, but there was no denying the sadness in his eyes. He had not seen his friends since Christmas. My daughter loved her return to school and kept all her excitement hidden from her brother issuing him miserable false tails of gigantic piles of school work.

The Hunts Post: Louisa Nevard writes her Modern Mum blog for The Hunts Post.Louisa Nevard writes her Modern Mum blog for The Hunts Post. (Image: LOUISA NEVARD)

My daughter had her second lockdown birthday at the end of March and unlike the last time, I felt too tired to organise her a treasure hunt birthday. However, three days before her birthday, my toddler gave me one whole night’s sleep! That’s all I needed, I wrote her clues, set up a trail and hid her presents with the clues around the garden.

Not all the presents had arrived in Amazon boxes so I used some old boxes I had.

Everything went really well and then my daughter shouted, “I’ve got a tablet!”. I groaned and said, “sorry it’s not a tablet that's just an old box with a picture on” inside she found a new hairband, which she loved.

One of the clues had a code breaker of four maths questions, of which I was really proud. Half way through my daughter started to cry and said it was too hard. Of the four questions I had written, I had incorrectly calculated two of them. I must have been more tired than I thought. Luckily, I knew the location of the next clue!

We formed a maze from garden toys. Each child would be blind-folded whilst being directed by a parent through the maze. Both children were very excited, but all did not go to plan. My daughter started screaming half way through and I had to take the blind fold off (she was afraid of the dark!).

My eldest was too excited and started running around with a blind fold on whilst we had to run around trying to stop him falling over. After seeing all the excitement my toddler wanted to join in so I gently put the blindfold on top of his head, like a bandana, and moved him around the maze while giving various instructions. All the children loved the treasure trail and can’t wait for the next birthday.

Louisa Nevard also writes Mums' Guide to St Neots at: www.mumsguideto.co.uk/st-neots.