One of my favorite parts of Easter is bringing the family and friends together for egg hunts! As my sons have gotten older, I have tried incorporating new ideas for egg hunts to keep the hunts original and interesting. Although my kids are probably happy just searching for eggs the traditional way, they know me well enough by now to realize we don't stick with traditional for long! My oldest, now a teenager, has known the truth about the Easter Bunny for a couple of years and I suspect my youngest is questioning it, but they still both really enjoy the egg hunts. My oldest even asked me this year if we are still going to be doing an egg hunt, afraid that losing the Easter Bunny would mean losing the fun parts of Easter as well. He was relieved to know that come Easter morning, he and his brother would still be out seeking little plastic eggs. I decided that our hunt this year would expand to a neighborhood wide search. My plan is to hide the plastic eggs around the neighborhood and give the boys maps of the area with indicators of where the eggs are hidden. We then hop on our bikes and ride around the neighborhood searching. They enjoy a good challenge so this should go over well. I'm hopeful no other kids come across the eggs before we have a chance to get back out there!
1. Skip the candy Easter Egg Hunt
Include a "task" on a piece of paper inside the egg (hop around the yard like a bunny for 1 minute, do a cartwheel, do 20 jumping jacks, etc.). When the finder finds an egg, they can bring it back to you and do the task. After they’ve done the task, they can either pick out a piece of candy or a toy or give them coins or tickets that they can turn in for something bigger at the end of the hunt.
#2- Glow in the Dark Egg Hunt
One year we purchased mini glow sticks that we put inside plastic eggs and hid them throughout the basement (it was raining outside that year). We turned on a blacklight and even had Easter buckets that had a flashing light on them. The boys searched in the dark for the eggs. We had leftover glow in the dark decorations from a recent birthday party, so we carried them over to the egg hunt as well.
#3- Treasure Hunt Egg Hunt
Hide the clues in eggs and put a number on each of the eggs so they don’t accidentally skip an egg in their searching. Have the clues lead to a bigger prize at the end, one for each kid, or one that everyone can share.
#4- Easter Egg Relay Race
Split your kids into teams. When you say go, have the first kid from each team go search for an egg. Once they’ve found an egg, they come back and tag the next teammate who has to go find an egg. Repeat until one team has found a specified number of eggs as a team. Then everyone gets their own basket of goodies!
#5- Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt
Put together a list of eggs that the kids have to find such as a striped egg, , a striped egg, a blue egg, an egg with pink Jelly Beans, an egg with a quarter inside, etc. Once the kids have found each item on their list, they can trade it in for a big gift (e.g., movie, toy, gift card, $10). This is a great way to still let kids search for a lot of eggs without a candy overload.
#6- Blind Folded Easter Egg Hunt
This one gets the entire family involved! Split into teams of two – one kid and one adult per team! Blindfold the adult and have them stand in front of the kid. When you say go, the kid has to direct the blindfolded adult out to find Easter eggs. The kid has to stay where they are at and just direct the adults from across the yard. Or switch it up and have the kids blindfolded with the parents giving directions. Either way, it's hilarious!
#7 – Reverse The Roles Easter Egg Hunt
Reverse the roles and have the kids fill the Easter eggs with things that they want written on slips of paper (like stay up for an extra hour, skip chores for a day, etc.). Once all of the eggs are filled, have the kids hide the eggs and have parents try to find them.
#8 – Puzzle Egg Hunt
Break up all of the pieces to a puzzle and place pieces (1 or multiple) in eggs. Hide those eggs and when they’ve found all the eggs, they have to put the puzzle together to win a larger prize. One year, I printed out a photo of a local place I was going to take the boys, then cut the photo into puzzle pieces and hid the pieces in the eggs. They had to assemble the puzzle at the end to see where we were going (baseball game).
#9 – Token Egg Hunt
Switch things up and instead of putting candy into eggs, put tokens instead. I like to do 1-5 tokens so that the number of tokens kids get is random, not based on how many eggs they find.
Then let them use the tokens they find to trade for things – arcade ticket style!
#10 – Raffle Ticket Eggs
Hide raffle tickets in eggs that kids can find then raffle off prizes at the end! The more eggs they find with raffle tickets inside, the more chances they have to win! Our prizes last year were gift cards ($10 each) to a variety of local ice cream parlors.
