Easter Egg Hunt Ideas!

History of Easter

Easter is celebrated by many people and has origins in a few different religions actually. The main origin being that in Christian traditions people celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 325 AD, Easter was decided to be on the first Sunday after the first full moon that follows the spring equinox (also known as Ostara in pagan folklore). There are also relations between Easter and the Jewish Passover. I read about the Hindu holiday celebration of spring's arrival called Holi. It is also known as the festival of colors and for very good reasons. On Holi, Hindu people like to celebrate by throwing colored powder at one another while enjoying an outdoor event of some kind.

The eggs and bunny theme come from pagan traditions that were practiced before Christian celebrated Easter. Traditions like festivals to celebrate the spring equinox (Ostara), decorating eggs, and tales of a hare who was once a bird that laid the most beautiful eggs. The goddess Eostre, goddess of spring, was said to have transformed the bird into a hare. Afterwards, the hare could only lay it's beautiful eggs on the day of her festival (Easter). In wiccan religion, Ostara is one of eight sabbats. Ostara symbolizes fertility, rebirth, new beginnings, the awakening of the earth, butterflies, rabbits, spring flowers, eggs, and fairies.

I could do a whole post on different traditions of Easter/Ostara, and I just might. But today this post is just about the different egg hunting ideas you can try out each year for your family. If you are lucky enough to still be able to afford doing Easter dinners, then this post will aide you in some fresh and modern ideas.

Eggsercise Egg Hunt

I will start with the one I have a printable for. The Eggsercise Egg Hunt can be played by filling the eggs with prompts to do physical exercise. So, each egg would have a paper in it that said something like, "Hop like a frog onto 3 lily pads". You can find my printable Eggsercise Egg Hunt on Etsy at this link for just three dollars if you are feeling generous enough to help me out with my kid friendly printables! They are even animal themed for added fun. It is also a great way to get your children into exercising while having fun at the same time.

Bunny Mart

I read about this cute idea on a blog called Play Party Plan. You remember the counter at Chuck E. Cheeses right? It's like that. You hide tokens or whatever you want to in the eggs and at the end of the hunt kids can use their collected tokens to buy prizes from your Bunny Mart setup.

Bunny Tracks

Another cute way to try your egg hunt this year is with printable bunny tracks! You can find these bunny tracks included with my Easter Activities Printable! This digital download includes a sheet for pin the cotton tail on the bunny where you can cut it out, hang it up, and use cotton rounds as you would pin the tail on the donkey. Also in this Easter printable are 12 kids coloring pages, 6 advanced coloring pages, and 11 paper games (mazes, find the difference, etc.).

Glow in the Dark

A must-try egg hunt for when the sun starts to set on Easter is a glow in the dark egg hunt. Shove glow sticks inside eggs so that they glow in your yard/home so your kids have an easier time using their peepers to find them! Passion for Saving has a post on how to go about doing this activity.

Scavenger Egg Hunt

An obvious choice is a scavenger hunt to combine with your egg hunt this Easter. Use rhyming riddles or cute themed clues to make a fun scavenger hunt.

Egg Exchange

I am just now finding out about egg exchanges, and it is just like any other exchange games you may have played on Christmas.

Egg Hunt Puzzles

You can buy blank puzzles if you want but you can also make them yourself. I will have printable puzzles in my printables shop soon!

Photo Wall Egg Hunt

Take photos of the eggs in their hiding spots and then print them out for this photo wall idea. They have to use the photos as clues to find the eggs.

Blindfolded Egg Hunt

This is basically reversing the roles. The eggs should be hidden in plain sight and then each adult has a child telling them where to go to get the eggs while the adults are blindfolded. Now that sounds like an interesting egg hunt.

Assigned Colors Egg Hunt

This is a genius idea so that all of the kids can find eggs without one trying to have more than the other. I feel like this should have been the original way to egg hunt. You can assign colors to certain age groups or colors to certain kids. You could make it random by having the pick a color out of a hat.

Confetti Eggs

A good messy way to have fun for an egg hunt is to use confetti eggs! I read about an idea to go with this activity, using gold confetti in just one of the eggs. It would be fun to watch everyone smashing eggs to see if they got the gold confetti egg.

Ceiling Egg Hunt

An exciting new twist to an egg hunt is to use double sided tape or tacky to hide eggs on the ceilings and walls. The thing I loved about this idea is how you get the eggs down. You can use nerf guns or rubber bands, but I personally think the nerf gun idea is absolutely genius. Credit for this idea goes to Get Your Holiday On blog!

QR Code Easter Egg Hunt

I couldn't believe it when I saw it but here is a new modern way to egg hunt. You can buy this printable QR code egg hunt on Etsy.

Treasure Egg Hunt

You can create a treasure map with clues and riddles to guide your children to the eggs. Some are using this for their kids to find their Easter baskets on Easter morning as well which is also a cute idea.

Fortune Telling Eggs

• I think the idea of kids opening up eggs to read cute fortune telling sayings or even some cute Easter jokes is adorable. It's a good alternative if you were to run out of ideas of what to put in the eggs. Some awesome fortune telling sayings can be found here at Fortune and Frame.