On our hunt for awesome and new Easter egg hunt ideas, we found an awesome website called Play Party Plan – run by a young mom, Britni Vigil. All credit goes to her for these awesome Easter egg hunt ideas. Enjoy!
Skip the Candy Easter Egg Hunt
Have kids fill Easter Eggs with slips of paper that have reasonable rewards (stay up for an extra 15 minutes, lunch date with mom) for them rather than candy/toys. Hide the eggs and the eggs that the kids find are the rewards that they get.
You could also just do this in addition to the typical candy eggs. And if you’re sticking with the no-candy theme but still want to put things in eggs – check out this huge list of Easter egg filler ideas!
Don’t skip the candy altogether, make this Cadbury eggs Easter cookie cake as an Easter dessert for the family instead!
Easter Egg Eggstravaganza
Fill each of the eggs with a slip of paper with a silly task such as sing “Itsy Bity Spider,” name three fruits that are red, or do a handstand. This is an Easter egg hunt, so make them fun.
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. Any of these Easter surprises would make great prizes!
If you want to do something like this for older kids, put different numbers of points on the tasks. So say one egg might have a task that is name ten states and their capitols that is worth 10 points and another egg might have sing I’m a little teapot worth 5 points.
Keep track of points to “buy” something at the end of the hunt.
Easter Egg Treasure Hunt
Write clues that send your kids around the house searching for the next location where they’ll find a clue (e.g., Run really fast, use your legs, this is where we keep the eggs). Or if you don’t have time to write them, here’s a printable treasure hunt you can use instead!
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.
If your kids aren’t the “open as I find it” kind of kids, you can also put a golden star or something on the outside of the egg so they know when they find a golden ticket egg.
Once they find a golden ticket, they can immediately (or after the hunt is over) trade it in for a bigger prize.
One word of warning – I highly recommend if you’re going to do this with kids that you put one per person. We went to an Easter hunt where there was one golden egg for the entire group of kids.
I had to deal with a sobbing child who no longer wanted to hunt for Easter eggs because he saw the golden egg first but was beat to it by a girl a few years older. It was an absolute mess. Easter egg hunts are made to be fun, not build character.
Easter Egg Hunt Ideas for Older Kids & Teens
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 (e.g., 20) as a team.
You can also do this with younger kids, just make sure they understand that they can only find one egg and come back!
Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt
Put together a list of eggs that the kids have to find such as a striped egg, an egg with green Jelly beans, an egg with a quarter inside, etc.
Here’s a great printable version you can use to help get you started!
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.
Choose Your Own Easter Egg Adventure Hunt
Similar to the Easter Egg Treasure Hunt mentioned above, write clues that send your kids around the house searching for the next clue. The only difference is that for this treasure hunt, you are going to put two eggs with two different clues in each location.
Kids can open both eggs but will have to choose which one to follow. Or if you have two kids, they could choose two different pathways completely.
So for example, one egg might lead them to the microwave while the other might lead them to the bathtub.
This is a little more complicated to put together but so fun for kids to have a choice. It’s kind of like one of those choose your own adventure books from back in the day! You can use these Easter scavenger hunt clues to get you started.
Reverse the Roles Easter Egg Hunt
Reverse the roles this year 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. Any eggs that are not found in a certain time limit are the ones that kids get to keep.
Scrambled Easter Egg Hunt
Pick out some bigger prizes (like any of these) and print out the names of those prizes on a sheet of paper (e.g., Movie Night) with each prize printed in a different colour egg.
Cut out each of the letters from the prizes and put one letter in each egg that you hide.
Make a poster with matching coloured blank spaces for each letter in each prize (kind of like I did in this advice graduation game) so that kids know how many letters are in each prize.
Have kids search for the eggs until they’ve found all of the letters for a particular colour and then have them unscramble the letters to win the prize.
You can either let them find all of the words or just win the first 2-3.
You could also do this with puzzle pieces and have them find the pieces to put together the puzzle instead of unscrambling letters. And have the prize on the back, like I did for this DIY Christmas gift.
Perfect Patterns Egg Hunt
Before the race, buy eggs in particular patterns or designs and colours (e.g., striped, pink polka dotted, glittery) then hide the eggs and come up with a pattern to use for the game.
So for instance, you might say you have to find eggs in the order of the colours in a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, violet). Or they have to find striped, solid, striped, solid, etc.
Every time they find an egg, they have to bring the egg back then go search again for the next egg in the pattern.
Once they’ve found all of the eggs in the correct pattern, they are rewarded with a bigger prize.
Play Party Plan is a one-stop resource for anyone looking for family travel tips, easy recipes, and ways to entertain their family and friends both home and abroad. If you need help planning parties, meals, or trips, visit www.playpartyplan.com.