A New Type of Easter Egg Hunt
By
Heather Wood
Year after year, some children, especially older ones, become bored with routine Easter Egg Hunts. While you may not be ready to give up the yearly hunt, it can be difficult to maintain the tradition. This year, try something different. Instead of an "Easter Egg Hunt," try an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt.
People of all ages love scavenger hunts! For older teenagers and adults, the harder a scavenger hunt is the better. This is why an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt will get praise for all age groups.
To pull off an Easter Egg Hunt that your children will never forget, you will want a number of plastic Easter eggs. You will also need to purchase some Easter gifts that you know your child will enjoy. Used video games and CDs are perfect for pre-teens and teens; hair supplies are great for those hard to please tween girls. Fill an Easter basket for children and hide them in a tough spot. You will be putting the scavenger clues into the plastic Easter eggs. If you have a limited budget, use colored construction paper instead and cut them into medium sized egg shapes. Write the clues on the paper and hide those.
Not only will this lengthen the typical length of an Easter Egg hunt, but it also taps into a child's reasoning skills, as he or she will need to decipher the clues and figure out where to go next.
If you want to hide items in different places so that your children are not teaming up, you can assign each child a different colored egg to find. This works well in preventing mix-ups.
You can make the clues easy for younger children and tougher for teenagers. A clue for a teenager can be very vague. If the item was hidden under a sofa cushion, for younger children you could use a clue like "Watch where you sit." For a teenager, you could hide something in a water cup and give a clue like "H2O". It is vague, but not deliberately misleading.
Easter Egg Scavenger Hunts can be held inside or outside, weather permitting. The options are endless.
If you are holding an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt for a large crowd (church or school organization), this plan still works. Fill a treasure chest with raffle tickets. You can divide the children up into appropriate age groups and stagger the Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt starting times. Children will search for clues and then work together to locate the treasure chest. Each child then takes one raffle ticket from the treasure chest. The final prizes can be awarded when every kid has found their "winning ticket" and cashes it in for the appropriate prize.
One of the best things about an Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt is that the clues are numbered. You will not lose count of how many "eggs" are still missing. With eggs numbered in order, the odds are slim that your child will skip a clue.