9 out-of-the-box Easter egg hunt ideas you need to try this year

There’s nothing more exciting than a garden full of colourful chocolate Easter eggs just waiting to be discovered on Easter morning. However, if you’ve done the standard egg hunt a few times and you’re looking for a way to up the ante, here are some fun ideas you can try this year.

1. Easter Bunny foot print trail

What could be more magical than an Easter Bunny-curated Easter egg hunt? Create bunny footprints out of paper and distribute them in a bunny trail around the garden, leading to the hidden eggs.

If you are artistically challenged, there’s a good template for bunny prints here.

Image via cleaneatingwithkids.com

2. Easter Bunny scavenger hunt

With this egg hunt, the Easter Bunny leaves notes and clues around to tell the kids where the eggs are hidden. The clues could be simple rhymes or riddles (for older kids) or picture clues for preschoolers. For example, a note with a drawing of the child’s dressing gown would then lead to an egg hidden in the pocket of the dressing gown.

Riddle clues could be:

• Where socks go when they’re lonely (the sock drawer)
• In the fruit cemetery (the fruit bowl)
• It’s always being lost and it has buttons on it (the TV remote, put the egg where you normally put the remote)
• You make space ships out of it (in the Lego box)
• Sometimes we sit on them, sometimes we put our feet on them, Mum likes to buy lots of them (behind the couch throw cushions)
• Where the eating tools are kept (the cutlery drawer)
• Something we are always looking for whenever we leave the house. (Inside a child’s shoe)
• You rest your head on it (Under child’s pillow)

3. Golden egg treasure hunt

If you’ve done the mini eggs thing every year and want to change things up a bit, what about a big treasure hunt for one special golden Easter egg?

Commission the Easter Bunny (i.e. you) to draw up a treasure map with clues as to where the golden egg will be hidden. Create a trail with smaller eggs along the way to signify that the kids are headed in the right direction. At the end of the hunt plant one big golden egg for everyone to share.

4. ‘All for one and one for all’ Easter egg hunt

As you’ve probably experienced, Easter egg hunts are fun until someone (usually the older sibling) manages to hunt down more eggs than everyone else (usually the younger siblings). The simplest solution is to organise the hunt as a collaborative ‘all for one, one for all’ activity. Everyone collects as many eggs as they can. Once all the eggs are collected, sit down, count them up and divide them evenly between the kids.

Political correctness gone mad? Or just smart parenting to avoid sugar-induced tears and tantrums? You be the judge.

5. Colour-coded egg hunt

If you have multiple children, a colour-coded egg hunt will also help to keep things fair. Allocate a specific colour to each child and that is the colour of the eggs they need to find. If they find one that’s not their colour, they must leave it for the correct child to find (preferably without giving the location away, though this is not always possible with smaller kiddos!).

6. Crack the code

For this egg hunt idea you will need fillable plastic Easter eggs.

You could either:

• hide the broken halves of the eggs around the garden, with the idea that the kids have to match up all the halves

or

• put together mismatched halves (so a half pink, half blue egg) that then have to all be pooled together in order to reunite the matching halves

When the ‘code is cracked’, everybody gets their prize: an Easter egg, of course! You can get fillable plastic Easter eggs here, and most Spotlight stores also stock them.

7. Beat the parents

In this hunt, the kids are in charge of hiding the eggs and the parents have to find them. Using a timer, the parents must find the eggs within a certain time frame. Any eggs that are not found by the parents, the kids get to keep for themselves. It’s up to you how competitive you want to be with this.

8. Glow in the dark egg hunt

Anything that happens after dark is double the fun for kids. You can do this one the night before if you think your little ones won’t be able to wait until dark on Easter Sunday.

Place flexible glow sticks inside fillable plastic eggs and hide them around the house or garden for an ‘after dark’ egg hunt. You will have to tie the glow sticks into a knot to get them inside the eggs. Or, you could also buy some glow-in-the-dark paint and paint your fillable plastic eggs – just remember to always wear gloves when handling glow-in-the-dark paint, and be sure your little kids don’t put it in their mouths.

You can buy glow sticks online here. And you’ll find more ideas for creating a glow in the dark Easter egg hunt here.

9. Easter egg piñata

If you haven’t made a piñata yet, are you even a parent??? The good news is, an Easter egg piñata is a no-brainer because balloons are basically Easter egg shaped.

Fill your piñata with mini eggs and decorate it like a giant Easter egg. Simple!

You’ll find easy instructions on how to make a piñata here. Plus some instructions on how to make individual mini piñatas here.

Happy Easter everybody, and may all your eggs be real milk chocolate!

 

This post was originally published on 20 March, 2017.