Egg-cellent Easter Egg Hunt Ideas
Written By Ryan Barrett
There’s probably something in the bowels of your mind that brings back Easter egg hunt ideas. You’re taking off at the sound of go. Diving through tall grass and dodging trees. Or maybe even digging through jacket pockets in a downstairs closet looking for bright pastel-painted eggs. Or perhaps it’s a smell. Every time you take in a whiff of vinegar it reminds you of egg painting so many eons ago. And if you have some little hopping bunnies of your own it’s more than likely that you’ve passed these traditions down. Like many things recycled though, it might not be the same. Trying to recreate a childhood memory sometimes falls a little flat and feels hollow. Or you might just be bored of the same old Easter egg hunt ideas. Or god forbid, you see the boredom in your little one’s eyes. And as we know when the boredom hits, it’s not long until the eggs go flying!
Not to worry though! Plenty of modern Easter game ideas will keep the boredom at bay and the eggs from flying. There are egg hunt games such as Easter egg treasure hunts, egg spoon races, and even Willy Wonka-themed golden egg ticket hunts! But before we dive into all the modern incarnations of an Easter egg hunt, let’s go back to the beginning. To where it all started. The original Easter egg hunt. And, at least you don’t have to go easter egg hunting for discounts. Check out our site-wide coupon code above!
What is an Easter egg hunt?
Many folks celebrate Easter for religious reasons; some celebrate it because it’s a time to bite the head off a chocolate bunny and acknowledge Spring. Whatever your reason to celebrate Easter we all have one thing in common: the Easter egg hunt. Most of us have done them as kids. Essentially it’s where parents hide plastic or painted eggs around the inside or outside of a house. Then, the little ones blast off in a sugar-crazed egg scavenging. But why do we hunt eggs on Easter? Search for painted eggs to commemorate a religious holiday. Or celebrate the coming of Spring? And what’s the connection with a big bunny? Last time you checked they don’t lay eggs! Let’s take a further dive below.
Where did the Easter hunt come from?
So we know what an Easter egg hunt is. But where did the Easter egg hunt come from? Now to answer the age-old question. What came first the egg or the Easter egg hunt? Well, eggs. Though many aspects of Easter come from pagan traditions, Christians are responsible for the egg hunt. The egg is a symbol of the resurrection and an empty eggshell represents Jesus’s empty tomb. Eggs were traditionally given to the Church by lowly villagers as Good Friday offerings. Then, at the beginning of the 14th century Edward the 1st decided to decorate a bunch of eggs in gold leaf and gifted them to himself. (How generous!)
What about the egg hunt then? This hard shell tradition dates back to the early 1600s. The Protestant superman, Martin Luther had the male members of his flock hide eggs. Then, the women and children would find them. This was also supposed to represent the biblical story in which women found the empty tomb of Christ. Fast forward a few hundred years to the late 1800s and English Queens are organizing egg hunts and artificial eggs are being produced en mass. And in the USA egg hunts were brought over by German immigrants in the 1700s. Like delicious German beer and brats, this tradition soon spread over the country like wildfire. Before we dive into egg hunts let’s take a closer look at the essential egg prerequisite: decoration. Because without decoration, hunting white eggs would be nothing more than farmwork.
How to decorate easter eggs?
As mentioned above decorating Easter eggs started somewhere in the 1300s. Similar to our modern incarnation right? Wrong! People would eat the eggs after decorating them. Easter eggs are usually hard-boiled and then painted for us and a few generations and counting. No eating is necessary!
Traditionally decorating eggs is a pretty straightforward process. If you’re not familiar here are the steps:
- Mix boiling water with 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar
- Add about 20 drops of preferred food coloring
- Soak your hard-boiled eggs in the mixture for about 5 minutes
- Let them cool off and repeat
- Hide them and let the Easter egg hunting commence!
5 Must-Try Modern Easter Egg Decorating Ideas
Though I’m sure the smell of boiling vinegar is wonderfully nostalgic, those food-coloring eggs have lost their luster. The smell may still be very pungent, but that’s it. This whole traditional egg coloring makes your kids yawn. If that’s the case, here are a few modern takes on Easter egg decorating.
Marble It Up
This is similar to the traditional eggs in vinegar method, except far less stinky. Mix a few drops of food coloring in a cool whip. Then coat the egg in the mixture and allow them to dry for half an hour. After that, wash off the whipping cream to reveal a colorful marble-pattern egg!
Picasso Your Eggs
This is as simple as it sounds. After hard-boiling your eggs, assemble your desired paint colors. (Acrylic or poster paint works best) Then paint any design you’d like on your eggs. You can also do this on brown eggs or dyed eggs for an additional decorative effect.
Get Stampy
One of the easiest and most visually stunning ways to decorate an egg is with stamps. Gather any stamps you or your kids wish to decorate with. Just make sure the stamps are small/mini so they can fully fit on the shell.
Put the Bounce into Your Shells
What better to decorate your Easter eggs than an Easter bunny? This is incredibly easy to do. All you need is a sharpie, felt, and glue. Simply cut out two bunny ears from the felt. Glue them on the egg. Then draw a cute bunny face and nose! Now it’s time to hunt Easter eggs and bunnies!
Cosmic Crackin’
This is an egg decorating hack for any of your little astronomers out there. First, paint or color any egg a shade of the night sky. Coloring an egg purple and black is excellent for this effect. Then coat the egg with a light layer of glue via a glue stick. After, sprinkle the eggs with silver and gold sprinkles, or anything else that resembles stars.
How to do an Easter egg hunt?
Before we go into all the exciting modern versions of an Easter egg hunt, let’s dig into the traditional meat and potatoes egg hunt. Simply, how to do an Easter egg hunt. Maybe you’ve never done an Easter egg hunt and want to do something simple and original. Or maybe you’ve had egg hunts, but are organizing a bigger hunt. How to plan an Easter egg hunt of that size? Either way below are some essential steps to follow when organizing an Easter egg hunt.
Select a Date
This might seem like an obvious thing to plan, but it can be more complicated than you think. A lot of times everyone you want to participate in an egg hunt has other plans on Easter. They might want to spend it with their own families. One suggestion is to have the hunt on the Saturday before Easter. Either way, it’s a good idea to coordinate with everyone that will participate instead of assuming they’re available.
Decorate and Choose Easter Egg Hunt Locations
First, find the proper hunting ground. Whether this is the inside or outside of your house or even the park. Wherever you choose be sure there are enough space and fun spots for hiding eggs. Once you’ve established your setting the real work begins. Decorating! There are a few essential items that will turn any setting into an Easter playground.
1) Hang a bunch of pastel balloons everywhere. The more balloons the better. These can even be used to hide eggs!
2) Get streamers or fake paper grass in Easter colors and spread them around the hunting ground.
3) Place as many stuffed bunnies as you can muster throughout your hunting grounds. This will make your little ones feel as though they are in the land of Easter bunnies!
4) Additionally you can get hang ‘Happy Easter’ signs or table decorations all through your house/hunting ground.
Hide a Good Amount of Eggs For Additional Hunters
Hiding eggs seems like a fairly easy endeavor. Right? Wrong! As many of you are well aware for any Easter egg hunt you’re hiding eggs for various ages. Even teenagers and sometimes adults. Imagine if you had a mixed-age group of kids and decided to hide the eggs in easy spots. You know, for toddlers. Talk about an easter massacre. Older kids snatch up eggs like eagles. While the toddlers are left empty-handed with eyes full of tears. Worry not, there is an easy solution.
Separate whatever area you’re using for the hunt into two. A big kid, and a little kid section. Now you can hide the eggs in easy-to-reach little places for the little ones. Any open easy-to-find spot will work. You can also string eggs to balloons for little ones, they will be psyched to not only get an egg but a balloon too! For the older kids, you can get more creative- in bushes, under leaves, and inside mailboxes. Also for the older kids, you can turn hiding the eggs into an Easter egg hunt game of its own. Divide the older kids into two groups- one for hiding and one for finding. The winner of the game is whoever hides or finds more successful.
Prepare The Map and Eggs of Any Kind
Preparation is always the key to any successful Easter egg hunt. If you are having a large group of participants, it’s highly recommended to use maps. This will give your egg hunt some level of organization. A lot of the time Easter egg hunts can be chaotic no matter what you prepare. So having a map is a little like damage control. It’s easier than you think. Draw a simple sketch of the hunting grounds, marking where the eggs are hidden. Then make as many photocopies as you need and you’re good to go!
And what would an Easter egg hunt be without eggs? What would a sandwich be without bread? Regardless of what kind of eggs you choose to hide it is a good idea to prep them well in advance. This is good to do because you will most likely be hiding a lot of eggs. And if you wait until the last minute that’s a whole lot of work in a little amount of time. Don’t stress though! The good news is you have many egg options. You can color eggs traditionally, in vinegar and food coloring. If you don’t have time for this there are hard plastic eggs, you can fill with treats. What to put in plastic eggs for an Easter egg hunt you ask? For that, we sell prefilled Easter eggs with all sorts of goodies. For something else that saves time, but is time-efficient try hiding chocolate bunnies! This can even be mixed into your egg hunt as a special prize!
Give Instructions
Surely doing the traditional hide and find Easter egg games is oodles of fun. But what happens if the oodles end too soon? If the kids have too much energy and need additional Easter games? Boredom sets in and…..DUCK the eggs are flying at your head! Not to worry! There are plenty of things you can do to either dress up for a traditional hunt, or other Easter games for kids to play! The first thing you must do is give your little hunters clear instructions on the rules of the hunt. It’s good to come up with rules because as aforementioned egg hunts are usually chaotic. Anything you can do to minimize the chaos, such as hunt instructions, is key!
Select a Prize and Other Ideas
To spruce up a traditional hunt try creating a system where kids receive different prizes based on the number of eggs. This follows the classic arcade archetype where you get a prize based on how many tickets you acquire. Though this takes time to prepare, the result is extremely engaging for older ones. For young ones, some alternative Easter game ideas can be Easter egg bowling or even pinning the tail on the bunny. Additionally, an excellent idea for both younger and older kids is a glow-in-the-dark egg hunt . Keep reading for some even more eggcellent Easter egg hunt ideas and game ideas!
Egg-citing Easter egg hunt ideas
And they’re off! About a half dozen little feet trample through the grass, scour the bushes, and climb the stairs. They’re finding eggs with the same zest as racehorses. Like racehorses, these chocolate bunny-fueled little ones are fast. Too fast! They’ve found all the eggs in less than half the time you expected. Now, you have to contain the beast. Not an easy task by any means. One of many Easter egg hunt ideas is to rehide the eggs. But that runs a serious risk of upsetting them when you take away their eggs. Or they’ll get bored playing the same game again. Not to worry! So you are less likely to run into this plastic egg predicament here is a list of not only Easter egg hunt ideas but games as well.
Swap The Candy: What to put in eggs for an Easter egg hunt?
After years of filling plastic eggs with the same old candy, you might start to ask yourself. ‘Isn’t there anything else I can stuff Easter eggs with?’ YES! There are plenty of ideas to stuff Easter eggs with swirling around in the air that doesn’t involve cavity-inducing food. Kids will be ok with that? For a split second, maybe not. Let’s take a look at two different ideas to swap the candy with.
IOUs Will Question The Existence Of Candy
A mass of little bodies zooms around the yard. You then see a sea of momentarily confused faces. They open the eggs and little looks of puzzlement wash across their faces. ‘Mom buys lunch’ or ‘Dad does chores for a week’. They then realize these are no ordinary notes. These are ‘I owe yous’. You play it as any ordinary egg hunt but swap the candy with little notes. These will reward a kid with something special they don’t get or do every day. It’s more than likely they will forget the candy altogether as they are handing you a note later on that reads ‘free large pizza for lunch’.
Prefilled easter egg with toys
Great substitutes for candy are not limited to ‘IOUs’. Because though IOUs are a fantastic substitute, they are more for older kids. Imagine a bunch of toddlers Easter egg hunting. They open the plastic shell and they have the same look of confusion. Except, unlike the older kids, the look of confusion doesn’t go away. They might even try to eat the paper! To prevent any paper eating try prefilled Easter eggs. Our store has a wide selection of prefilled Easter eggs with toys. From squishy toys to toy cars to unicorn bracelets we have numerous kinds of carrots for all your little bunnies out there.
Easter Basket Scavenger Hunt
The Easter Basket scavenger hunt is probably the best substitute for Easter egg hunt ideas if you want to create a long game. Something the kids will be busy with for hours. This game is great as it is very organized. Kids have to complete one step to get to another. Like their favorite video game, they will have to go through levels to win. A great suggestion for this is to first get Easter baskets. We have a wide variety on our site. You can check them out here. Besides a basket, you will have to get everything else you want your hunters to find. This can range from toys to prefilled easter eggs. For older kids, you can make it more complex by hiding a clue inside the prefilled easter egg. This clue leads to the next until the game is finished.
I’ve Got The Golden Ticket…Or Egg
What kid doesn’t want to follow in the footsteps of Charlie Bucket, or any of the Charlie and the Chocolate factory Characters? Drink from a chocolate river or suck on a never-ending gobstopper. And since there’s a scene with golden eggs in the movie what better game to play than find the golden egg? For this, you simply need any kind of plastic Easter eggshell. If you can find bulk easter eggs even better! Preferably a white plastic one so you can color it easier. We have a ton on our site. You’ll also need either a gold marker or gold wrapping. Create one or a couple of Easter golden eggs. The first kid to find the golden egg wins! Alternatively, instead of coloring an egg gold, you can fill an egg with a golden ticket.
Skip Easter Egg Stuffers and Include Pretend Money instead
Since many children love playing shopkeeper what better Easter game than to incorporate this into your hunt? All you’ll need is pretend money and plastic eggs. We happen to have some prefilled plastic eggs with different fake denominations on our site. After the kids find all the plastic eggs they can use the money inside to buy different items from the designated shopkeeper. These are not only excellent Easter egg stuffer ideas but a great way for kids to practice Math.
DIY Easter Egg Word Game To Chick Out
Is it not math, but something such as spelling or word association you would like to incorporate into your hunt? Then these Easter egg games are for you! For our DIY Easter egg word game, all you need is white plastic Easter eggs and markers. We have a huge 108-piece set available here. You simply write different letters on the shells and then the players have to spell as many different words as they can from the eggs they find. This is great for any age group as older kids will be able to create more difficult words. And for the very young ones you can draw simple pictures on the eggs. Then all they have to do is name the picture to receive a treat!
New Easter Egg Hunt Ideas Will Make You Hoppy
Hopefully, and we do hope that one of the above games will put a little pep in your step. Because if you think about it, it’s a real shame not to get the most out of Easter. Your kids get to run around searching for candy fueled by joy and excitement. And when you’re kids are full of joy it usually causes a smile! If you’re not convinced or still need even more pep for your step check out the above coupon code! Help us help you put Easter egg hunt ideas in your basket, at a discount!
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