How to Organize a Backyard Easter Egg Hunt

If you’re not able to go out for an Easter egg hunt this year, you can do one yourself at home. In fact, a lot of families do this in addition to a formal Easter Egg Hunt because they have more control over it, it allows smaller children to get a fair shot, and it can be great fun for all of the family. Here’s how to organize a backyard Easter egg hunt!

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Backyard Easter Egg Hunt

Before long the Easter Bunny will be hopping down the bunny trail, hiding eggs for excited boys and girls to find. Avoid Easter egg hunt pitfalls like hunting chaos, melting chocolate, unsportsmanlike conduct and disappointed kiddos, by planning ahead and incorporating a few of these simple ideas and tips into your backyard Easter egg hunt festivities.

Know how many children with be participating.

Before you can properly prepare for your Easter egg hunt, you need to know how many children are going to be there so you can make it fun for everyone. Once you know the number of kids coming, you can pick a number of eggs each child will be ‘allowed’ to find. If you have 10 kids coming, you might want to let them each find 15 or 20 eggs, but if you have a larger crowd — 20 or more kids — you might want to stick with 10 eggs apiece. Giving kids a limit on the number they can find helps keep it ‘fair’ for smaller kids. Older kids should be encouraged to let younger kids find ‘easier’ eggs. Another idea if you’re super organized and have a lot of kids is to colour-code eggs- certain age group kids can find certain colours. (Little kids only get the yellow eggs! etc)

Buy or make your Easter eggs

Buying plastic eggs is a great option because you can fill them with candy or treats, you save the time of cooking and decorating and there is no mess to clean up. You can also make your own Breakable Chocolate Egg to hide Easter treats and chocolates.

Stuffing the Easter Eggs

Bored with the traditional jelly beans and chocolate eggs that seem to melt as the eggs lay in wait in the warm sun? These days supermarkets stock a huge variety of Easter candy individually wrapped for convenience and cleanliness. Consumers can purchase everything from gummy bunnies and egg-shaped gumballs to mini egg-shaped Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms and more. Opt for the non-chocolate varieties of candy, if your Easter egg hunt will take place outdoors in a warm climate.

Better yet, parents interested in cutting back on their child’s sugar intake can find a variety of Easter-themed trinkets like stickers, tattoos, bouncy balls, etc. designed specifically in size for the popular plastic eggs at party stores and discount retailers like Wal-Mart and Target to fill their eggs with instead.

If you’d like to “fill” your eggs with larger items like stuffed animals or sand toys, assign the prizes a number and then fill the plastic eggs with a slip of paper with a number on it. At the end of the hunt, children can take their numbers and redeem them for the corresponding prize. This is a great way to cut back on the waste of useless trinkets that will probably just end up in the trash in a day or two.

Hide your Easter eggs

Once you have your eggs, you need to prepare them for hiding, then work out a plan to where you will hide the eggs. You want good hiding spots but you also want it to be safe so avoid any dangerous areas or objects.

If you’re going to have both young and old children participating, consider making zones so you can hide the eggs based on the age groups. You want the younger children to have a chance to get eggs and you want it to feel like more of a challenge for the older ones as well.

Evening the Easter Egg Hunt Playing Field

At every Easter egg hunt, there always seems to be one, two or five kids that are bit more competitive than the others, resulting in a few kids going home with most or all of the coveted Easter eggs. Hunt organizers can avoid this pitfall in a few ways.

1. If your Easter egg hunt caters to a large group of children, divide the “hunting grounds” up into age groups so that children only hunt for eggs with other children around their same age. It’s much easier for a two-year-old to enjoy the Easter egg hunt and take home a nice haul of eggs if they don’t have to compete with an 8-year-old.

2. Another way to instil fairness into your Easter egg hunt is to assign the children an egg cap. In other words, allow each child to collect ten eggs. Once they have found ten eggs, the hunt ceases for them. That way each child goes home with the same amount of eggs. Another twist on this is to number the eggs and have each child search for the eggs with the number (or colour if you choose) they are assigned.

Backyard Easter Egg Hunt Ideas

• Hide a couple of golden eggs and fill these extra special eggs with an extra special prize such as a gift card or dollar bill.
• Planning an Easter egg hunt for older children or teens? Make the Easter egg hunt more challenging by holding it at night. Once darkness sets, arm kids with a flashlight and begin the hunt.
• Fill eggs with coins, and then let kids go to a “store” you’ve set up where they can buy items of their choosing with the money they’ve found.

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Organizing a thrilling and successful backyard egg hunt, doesn’t take a lot of time or money, just a little know-how and imagination. With these simple steps, you can have your own Easter egg hunt in your backyard. It’s fun, it’s easy, and everyone will make memories to last a long time.

How do you organize a backyard Easter egg hunt? Do you have an Easter egg hunt inside instead?