Easter Egg Hunt Ideas: How to Host a Fun-Filled Easter the Kids Will Love

Easter eggs have been on supermarket shelves since New Year’s Eve, daffodils are already nodding in the sun and the kids are well and truly geared up for another school holiday (already? Didn’t we only just have a half term??). So then how is it that we, as parents, manage to forget all about Easter until the very last minute? Every year! 

Luckily it’s not all that difficult to create an Easter egg hunt event that everyone, and especially the kids, will love, whether it’s months in the making or all cobbled together at the very last panicked moment. From traditions you simply can’t miss to ideas for putting on an Easter egg hunt with a twist, creating a spring season to remember is easy with our complete guide to organising the perfect Easter celebration.

Fill Your Easter Egg Hunt Basket with History and Traditions

There are certain Easter traditions we just can’t do without, some of them dating back hundreds of years.

What do eggs have to do with Easter?

Although Easter is a Christian festival, historians believe that eggs have been being given as a springtime gift for a long, long, looooong time, and by people all over the globe too. Even dying eggs in bright colours appears to have been a tradition started by early Christians in ancient Mesopotamia, though this crafty celebration is now more commonly linked to the Orthodox church. From here, the tradition of Easter eggs as gifts has spread across Europe, gaining traction along the way. Artificial eggs were adopted by the UK in the 1850s while the chocolate eggs we so love today had appeared in France and Germany by the early 19th century. Here in Britain, chocolate Easter eggs hit the shelves in1873, courtesy of confectionary company Fry’s.

Why do we hold Easter egg hunts?

The idea of eating and decorating eggs at Easter makes some sense – linking to new life and, perhaps, to the shape of the stone rolled away from Jesus’ tomb. But who on earth came up with the idea of squirreling eggs away in the garden? Historians aren’t sure but they think the first person to pop an egg under a bush may just have been German priest and theologian Martin Luther who, fun guy that he was, organised egg hunts for his parish way back in the early 1500s. It was the Lutherans too who first gave us the Easter Bunny (or, as he was originally, the Easter Hare).In the UK, the Easter egg hunt appears to have been popularised by Queen Victoria, who wrote about hunts organised by her German-born mother in her childhood diaries. The Queen and her husband, Prince Albert, then continued this tradition, organising egg hunts for their own children.

Weird and wonderful Easter traditions

Easter traditions go way beyond the Easter Bunny and his egg hunts though. Here are some of our favourites from the UK and beyond:

Pace egg plays: dating back many hundreds of years, the pace egg play is a kind of mumming or medieval mystery play, usually involving mock combat. With their origins in northern England, pace egg plays still take place in some rural communities in Lancashire and West Yorkshire.

Egg rolling: egg rolling also originated in northern England, however the most famous egg rolling game is now hosted by the President of the United States and takes place on the White House’s South Lawn. This tradition involves simply rolling a hard boiled, painted egg down a grass slope. Lancastrian legend tells us that should an egg break during the contest its shell should be carefully crushed to keep witches from using it to make boats.

Murder mysteries: unlikely though it sounds, in Norway, Easter is a time for murder. Here TV stations play whodunnits, new detective novels are released and milk cartons come decorated with short mystery tales to read at the breakfast table.

Cigarette celebrations: controversially, the people of Papua New Guinea celebrate Easter by decorating trees with cigarettes and other tobacco products. These are then handed out to congregants after church services.

Pot smashing: Greece’s love of broken crockery has bled into their Easter celebrations too. Corfu’s Greek Orthodox community celebrates Easter Saturday by dropping huge water-filled china pots from their balconies at precisely 12 noon.

Easter Egg Hunt Ideas Kids Will Love

Aside from chocolate, what do you need to make an Easter egg hunt go off with a bang? Keep reading for our top tips…

Easter egg hunts for budding Sherlocks

If your kids have outgrown simply running around the garden looking for the glint of a shiny wrapper in the undergrowth, consider adding in clues that would challenge even Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells. Whether they rhyme, contain a few family in-jokes, or are cutely decorated on colourful paper, avoid confusion by making sure your clues are age appropriate and can be solved without too much brain pain. Getting another adult to test your carefully constructed hunt out the night before is a good idea to avoid any disasters on the day.

Easter egg hunts for kids who don’t eat chocolate

Easter doesn’t have to mean chocolate. If, for any reason, your child doesn’t eat the sweet stuff, there are plenty of other ways to make egg hunting fun. Why not pick up an Easter themed jigsaw puzzle and hide the pieces in reusable eggs to be found and later put together? Or how about doing something similar with Lego? Alternatively, if your kids enjoy a little exercise and a lot of peril, try hiding pre-filled water balloons (they’re almost egg-shaped, right?) and launching a soggy attack while they frantically search for ammo to retaliate with.

Everyone’s a winner

One of the things that makes Easter egg hunting so popular is that everyone gets to take away a little something, whether that’s chocolate eggs or something else. To double the fun and make sure that even the slowest egg hunter is recognised for some skill or another, invite participants to collect trophies in a post-hunt awards ceremony. From Fastest Finder to Trickiest Discovery and Best at Sharing, everyone can be honoured for their own special skill.

A hunt that suits your child’s personality

Every child is different. Some will diligently egg hunt for hours, while others give up, bored and disheartened, within seconds. Some love competition, while some won’t take well to the gloating of a quicker egg collector. Whoever you’re planning a hunt for, be sure to take into consideration their age, skill level and personality. For example, if organising an egg hunt for toddlers, try attaching prizes to balloons, making them easy to spot in the garden. If your hunt is intended for children at different skill levels consider offering two trails – eggstremely easy and hard to crack. Large groups of children might find a relay hunt enjoyable, with each participant given a chance to be the star of the show while learning about team work and sharing in a fun way.

Easter Egg Hunt Ideas: The Practicalities

You know as a parent that something fun for the kids means a bunch of work for you. So how do you make Easter Sunday a little bit easier on yourself while minimising the chance of tears and tantrums?

Employ the internet’s experts

Whatever your grand Easter idea, chances are that someone out there on the information super-highway has already done it. So don’t bust a gut unless you have to. Wracking your brain for Easter egg hunt clues? Printable riddles are out there to save you the trouble. Don’t know how to blow eggs or what paints to use to prettify them? There’s a tutorial online for that. And when it comes to filling your basket with Easter eggs that will suit everyone from the child who can’t eat dairy to the class fashion-leader? Ignore the local supermarket in favour of niche online retailers.

Keep the kids busy for longer

Fallen foul of Easter egg hunts that are over in minutes? Sometimes no matter how tricksy you make those clues or how great a hider you think you are, you’re surprised by a child tugging at your skirts telling you they’re done long before you’re ready for them. Be prepared with easy Easter crafts for quick finishers. Think colouring sheets, egg decorating or cress-head planting. Alternatively create the longest lasting, most difficult egg finding challenge in the whole world. How? Mix filled plastic eggs with traditional ball pool balls. Throw the lot into a paddling pool and voila! An Easter egg hunt nobody can claim is too simple.

Don’t forget the adults

Easter should be fun for all the family and that means involving the grown ups too. There are many ways to do this, from laying on Easter cocktails (Crème Egg martinis anyone?) or a delicious Easter themed brunch, complete with hot cross buns, to enjoy while the little ones hunt for eggs to designing an adults only Easter hunt in which the prizes are better suited to more grown up tastes. Gin miniatures, sophisticated truffles and babysitting vouchers all make great Easter surprises for parents. And speaking of babysitting, bribing older siblings and cousins to run the children’s egg hunt (most teens will do anything for chocolate after all) will free you and other parents up to enjoy a more relaxing Easter Sunday.

Easter Egg Hunt Ideas On A Budget

We’ve barely recovered from the financial straits we were left in by Christmas when Easter starts making eyes at our bank accounts. So just how do you keep costs down when it comes to Easter?

Recycle your Easter egg hunt

With all those eggs to buy, Easter can get expensive very quickly, especially if you’re buying for nephews, nieces and friends as well as your own children. Keep the cost of an Easter egg hunt down with crafty recycling ideas to minimise waste and reduce costs year on year. Refillable eggs, available in plastic, cardboard and other materials, are a sound investment, allowing you to fill them with whatever takes your fancy each Easter. This allows you to change things up with changing tastes and choose treats that suit your budget. Perhaps this year you’ll fill your eggs with favourite sweets but next year it could be ingredients to make Easter bunny cookies. You can even fill them with instructions (do 20 star jumps, show off your best dance moves) for an Easter egg hunt with a competitive Simon Says twist.

Opt for homemade

One of the things we love about Easter is that so much of it seems to be based around crafting. From marbling blown eggs to making cards from sugar paper and cotton wool balls, we all did more than our fair share of Easter-themed crafting as kids. Keep that vibe going into adulthood by enjoying a homemade Easter with your own children. Reintroduce crafts you did at school and let them teach you something that they’ve learnt. Bake your own Easter cookies. Cheer your house with flowers from the garden. Grab some cheap wicker baskets and decorate them ready for a hunt. You could even buy an Easter egg mould and make your own eggs. Not only does a homemade Easter help to save money, it can provide good old-fashioned Easter fun too.

Attend organised Easter events

When you factor in the buying of eggs, the printing of clues, the decorations and everything else that goes into hosting your Easter egg hunt, you may just find that a local Easter event saves you money in the long run. Many small farms will run an Easter egg hunt for children, often included in the price of entry (meaning a whole day of entertainment for your investment). Community events in local parks and recreation grounds, meanwhile, can be a cheap, or even free, alternative. In addition, these kinds of events are usually organised in support of worthwhile charities. And the real bonus of an organised Easter egg hunt? Someone else gets to clean up the mess afterwards.

Easter Egg Hunts Indoors

And if come Easter Sunday the heavens decide to open, you can always bring the Easter egg hunt indoors. We have to be prepared for the Great British weather to perform at it's best after all!

Easter Egg hunts can be a whole-house effort or restricted to a single room. The bedroom is a great place to host an egg hunt. After all with all those chests of drawers and wardrobe doors to stash them behind, there's plenty of hiding spots! Pull back the duvet and hide an egg or two underneath. Nestle another in between the pillows. And why not even stow some under the bed. Encourage your little ones to look high and low as the fully embrace the thrill of a good old-fashioned Easter egg scavenger hunt!