Creative Easter Egg Hunts

March 23, 2019 8:33 p.m.

We’ve traded coats for jackets with the coming of spring and can look forward to festive Easter fun like going to visit the bunnies at the Country Club Plaza. Easter egg hunts should be well planned with simple rules in place for things to run smoothly when dealing with children and candy. Our family has done Easter egg hunts at Bass Pro Shop and local churches, as well as with playgroups and at our own at home. Here are some fresh approaches for Easter egg hunts to share with your children this spring.

Tip: To use our guide to find Easter Egg Hunts in the Kansas City area.

Easter Egg Snacks

A simple tradition I’ve done since my oldest was around 2 years old is doing little egg hunts a few times a week for afternoon snacks. When I decorate our house for spring, the Easter baskets come out, as well as all those plastic eggs. I believe this tradition stemmed from being a new mom with cabin fever, anxiously awaiting spring during the last sluggish weeks of Midwest winter. If it was cold, I would hide the eggs (usually just six per kid) around the house during their nap. On the hopeful spring-like days, I put the eggs outside for them to find and then enjoy some outdoor snacking and playtime afterward. This is such a simple activity, but my kids LOVE this tradition and look forward to it each spring.

As for what to put inside the eggs, I just fill them with whatever snack-type things they usually have, plus maybe one treat for extra fun. I also made the rule of not eating any until all the eggs were found so they could sit down in a designated area to eat their snack and avoid spilling as they went. As I had more children, I assigned a color to each kid so everyone knew which eggs were theirs and recognized it was fair. Knowing each child’s eggs were all found and accounted for helped me for the next hunt.

Get Active

Amanda Wetterson began a similar tradition with her two little boys but has put an active spin on it. “Since my son went to his first Easter egg hunt, that’s all he’s wanted to do, so we do at-home Easter egg hunts. Instead of prizes, I put pieces of paper with tasks like ‘Do 10 bunny hops’ or ‘Run in place,’” she says. Depending on the age and ability level of your children, you could include more activities, such as climbing trees, doing hopscotch, making two shots at the basketball hoop, hula hooping for one minute and more.

Include Children with Special Needs and Limited Mobility

Consider hosting an inclusive Easter egg hunt for children of all abilities. Brittany Yarbrough, mother of two (with another one on the way), says, “Many community egg hunts nowadays are accommodating special needs children, and it’s amazing! Most community events offer different hunts for each age group, and then they offer a separate special needs hunt. They are usually set up exactly the same way as the regular hunts, just a field/area with eggs scattered all over. In previous years I noticed many children in wheelchairs or with mobility issues whose parents had to pick up the eggs for them. Last year we attended an event where they put hay bales in the field and placed a bunch of eggs on top of the bales. This allowed the children with mobility issues to pick up their own eggs independently! As the mother of a severely autistic and wonderfully amazing little boy, I can say that it’s little things like this that make a huge difference in my son’s life. Seeing people take the time to acknowledge him and his desire to live his life like any other child and go out of their way to make sure he can be included really means so much to my son, my family and families like ours.”

Extra Fun

Whether you’re hosting a large event, a neighborhood event or just a small one for your own kids, think out of the box completely. Host a hunt in the woods, a treasure hunt, a relay race, a scavenger hunt, a messy hunt with mud or shaving cream. If adding an adult egg hunt, fill eggs with money, lotto tickets, free night of babysitting ticket, and more. Amber Callaway, mother of two, says, “We've even done a glow-in-the-dark Easter egg hunt.

Faith Based

If you’d like to stick to a more faith-based approach to Easter, Cara Johnson, mother of three, suggests, “My kids LOVE searching for our Resurrection eggs in our own house around that time of year.” Similar to an Advent calendar during Christmas, Resurrection eggs help explain the story of Easter from a Christian perspective in a more hands-on approach to help the younger crowd understand the holiday. Wetterson says, “When our small group kids came over, we put different silly ways to shout ‘Jesus is alive!’—really loudly, really quietly, in a cowboy voice, like a baby, etc.”

As I add years of experience to my parenting resume, I realize more and more I need to keep things simple. When we parents do that, we’re able to enjoy this celebration—and many others—with our kids to create happier memories together and traditions that are fun for the whole family to look forward to each year.