Easter egg hunts are a great Easter holiday tradition that can be lots of fun for everyone. The weather is usually still beautiful in Australia, so it is a good opportunity to get active outdoors. An Easter egg hunt can be a great way to create memories, spend time with friends and family and have a lot of fun!
If you are planning an Easter Egg treasure hunt this year, we have gathered together some tips on how to make your day tears free, stress free and fun.
1. Safety first
When you are thinking about defining the boundaries of your Easter egg hunt, spend some time thinking about where you DON’T want the kids to go. Set some boundaries of the treasure hunt. If you have older kids you might want to specify particular areas for them not to go. You don’t want them climbing on the garage roof for example. So you could stipulate: ‘there are no eggs hidden in the vegetable garden (or on the roof), so don’t hunt there’.
If you are having the Easter egg hunt indoors, you might want to contain the hunt to just one floor of the house to avoid running up and down stairs.
You are quite used to looking out for potential hazards for your children. An Easter egg hunt just requires the same kind of safety planning.
2. Give everyone a prize and ensure every child gets a fair chance
If you are inviting other families over for an Easter egg treasure hunt, or you have multiple children, it is a good idea to avoid tears by giving everyone a non chocolate prize for participating in the Easter egg hunt. This way, everyone feels as though they have won something.
Similarly, if you have older children and younger children it can be a good idea to have two different search areas for the different age groups of children, so that you can place easier eggs to find in the young area and make the older eggs more difficult to find. This way, the older children will not spoil the fun for the younger children by finding all the easier placed eggs.
Another idea to keep things fair is to colour code eggs for either different children or different age groups. This fosters a cooperative spirit amongst the children, who will help others to find their coloured eggs.
Alternatively, at the end of the treasure hunt, you can count up the eggs that each person found and award a special non chocolate prize to the child with the most eggs. Then, you can evenly divide up the chocolate eggs (if you are using them), and give each child an equal amount of chocolate.
Plan for about a dozen eggs for each child so that everyone gets a nice basket (or bucket) full of eggs.
3. Avoid the sugar rush from excessive chocolate consumption
You can set rules for chocolate consumption to help your child avoid a nasty sugar high (and crash).
Using non chocolate prizes, plastic Easter eggs or real boiled and dyed eggs in the hunt can also avoid the amount of chocolate that your children consume during and after the Easter egg treasure hunt.
If you are using plastic eggs, you can fill them beforehand with prizes such as coins, temporary tattoos, stickers, beads, small toys or a number that corresponds with a non chocolate prize.
There might be one ‘Golden egg’ with a $5 or $10 note, that is special, or you might have a silver egg and a gold egg that gets a special prize for the child who finds each of these.
Great non chocolate prizes for an Easter egg treasure hunt are toys that will keep the child occupied for the rest of the Easter weekend / school holidays / year.
Make sure that you let the children know before they begin that they will be expected to give the plastic eggs back to you at the end of the Easter egg hunt.
4. Older children love riddles and clues
A special idea for an Easter egg treasure hunt is to make a map with pictures for younger kids, or rhymes, clues and riddles for older kids to find the Easter eggs.
Alternatively, you could insert a clue in each egg that leads to the next egg, and eventually leads to a special Easter prize.
If you have more than one child, you can give them different first clues leading to the second egg and then they can hunt for the subsequent eggs together.
Another great idea for older kids is to write letters on the Easter eggs or attach them with stickers and give a special prize for the child who can create the longest word out of their Easter egg letters.
If you have physical letters available, a great idea can be to start an Easter egg hunt with a pile of letters, which spell out a clue about where the next egg is hidden – ‘fridge’ or ‘gumboots’ for example. Then, in addition to the Easter egg at the next location is another pile of letters that need to be decoded to find the next clue.
5. Avoid melted chocolate messes and nasty smells later on
It is a GREAT idea to count the number of eggs before you hide them on the treasure hunt. This way, you will not have any nasty surprises weeks or months later from rotten egg smells, or melted chocolate under a couch cushion.
If you set out picnic rugs around the park or garden that you are using for the treasure hunt and have the children sit on the rugs to count and eat their eggs, this avoids having to pick up chocolate crumbs throughout the house and garden. You can just throw the rugs in the wash and avoid the mess!
6. Inside or outside, an Easter egg hunt is a great adventure
If you do not have a garden, you can easily set up the Easter egg treasure hunt in a nearby park or playground. This will give you lots of interesting places to hide the eggs.
In an open space for younger children, you can bring obstacles such as ride ons, teddy bears, chairs and other toys to place eggs on or in.
An Easter egg hunt inside can also be lots of fun, if you prefer to stay inside or the weather is bad. You might want to set some boundaries on where to hunt in the house, but it can be a lot of fun.
An Easter egg treasure hunt doesn’t require a lot of time or money to organise but it can bring huge rewards in terms of fun, enjoyment and family memories for your family this Easter.
If you would like to buy some non chocolate Easter gifts and prizes to use in your Easter egg hunt, you can browse our collection of Easter toys here.
Don’t forget that every order from either our Grande Famille range or Easter toy range goes into the draw to win a beautiful Grande Famille Little Wardrobe. Order your Easter toys before April 6th to go into the draw!