How to organise an Easter Egg hunt with a difference

Make the most of your kitchen cabinets this Easter

Easter is rapidly approaching. Easter Sunday this year is Sunday 31st March and will be here before we know it. If you are entertaining family or friends over Easter, how about this year organising an Easter Egg hunt with a difference?

If your idea of an Easter Egg hunt is simply hiding a few eggs round the house, think again! There are lots of different items that you could hide, and also lots of creative ways for children to find those hidden items. So in this article we’ll take a look at just a few ideas for making your Easter Egg hunt much more exciting this year. 

We’ll look at:

• Preparation before Easter Sunday;
• Things to do on Easter Sunday  morning;
• How to run the Easter Egg hunt;
• Time to relax after the Easter Egg hunt.

Preparation before Easter Sunday

The first thing to do is to find a place in your home where you can start to gather items for your Easter Egg hunt. This could be a kitchen cabinet, wardrobe, drawer or understairs cupboard. Anywhere that prying eyes are unlikely to spot! A kitchen cabinet is actually a pretty good option : hidden in plain sight so to speak. Think of a cabinet that contains stuff of no interest whatsoever to your kids, and you may have the ideal hiding place.

You then need to decide what kind of items you are going to hide. For example, are you happy to stick with chocolate eggs or other kinds of sweets, or do you want to use fillable eggs to hold items of your choice? You can buy plastic fillable eggs from most large supermarkets, department and craft stores but can also get fillable eggs made from sustainable materials – such as wood, metal or papier mache – from more bespoke online outlets such as Etsy and Not on the High Street. 

Or you could consider digressing from the egg shape and using something else in which to hide small gifts. For example, small cardboard boxes, paper bags or small satin or organza jewellery bags. 

And of course if you are using any kind of fillable container, you then need to get things to put into those containers. These can be geared towards the participants but could include items such as coins, lego, stickers, scrunchies, lip gloss, mini animals, marbles, beads, jewellery, erasers, keyrings, mini puzzles or slime.

Things to do on Easter Sunday morning

On the morning of Easter Sunday you will be so glad that you did all the preparation in advance! With everything already bought and stashed safely away in your kitchen cabinet, the only thing left to do at this point is hide all the items around your home and garden. Unfortunately this probably means you getting up at some unearthly hour to avoid being caught in the act, but don’t worry, you can relax later on.

You will probably be able to think of lots of great hiding places – both inside and out – for Easter eggs, but a few ideas to help are:

• Inside
• In vases or ornaments
• In the fridge or freezer
• Amongst the children’s toys
• In a wardrobe
• Under the bed
• In the fruit bowl

• Outside
• Behind a garden statue
• Buried in a flower bed or sandpit
• In a shed or other outbuilding
• In a plant pot

Bear in mind that, depending on the type of Easter Egg hunt you are doing, you may also need to hide clues. So let’s take a look at some different types of Easter Egg hunt to see what would work best for you and your eager participants . . . .

How to run the Easter Egg hunt

The type of Easter Egg hunt you run will need to vary depending on the age of the participants. So here are three ideas for young children and three for older children and teenagers:

• Three Easter Egg hunt ideas for young children

• Warmer / colder

All you need to do here is simply hide lots of small eggs in different places around your home and/or garden. Give each child a place to start looking, then help them to find eggs by using the words “warmer” and “colder” as they get closer to or further away from the eggs. 

• Who can find the most eggs?

An even simpler option is just to hide small eggs then let the kids loose and see who can find the most eggs. If you do this, you can add a bit of structure – and peace-keeping! – by having additional prizes at the end to even things out.

• Eggs with instructions

If you are using fillable eggs, you have complete control over what you put inside. We looked at some ideas earlier, but you could also make it into a game. For example, there could be instructions for the child to follow such as doing a somersault, touching their toes or hopping like a bunny – with a prize for doing this.

• Three Easter Egg hunt ideas for older children and teenagers

• An Easter Egg hunt with clues

An Easter egg hunt with clues can be great fun. Start by giving participants the first clue, which then leads to a place with the next clue until the final clue leads to the main prize. If they are working as a team, the prize needs to be enough to go round all participants. If you are feeling very energetic you could have the clues lead to smaller prizes – such as creme eggs – and get them to text you when they find one to get the clue to the next one.

• A team relay Easter Egg hunt

Split participants into two or more teams and get the first member of each team to search for an egg – using whatever clues you provide – and bring it back to their team. Then the next member of each team goes searching for another egg. The game runs until either a pre-agreed time is up, or all eggs have been found. The winning team gets prizes in addition to the eggs they have already found.

• An incentivised Easter Egg hunt

This type of Easter Egg hunt might work even with the most difficult-to-impress teenager. For this hunt, use fillable eggs that contain home-made vouchers for various privileges that will be of interest to them. For example:

• A new item of clothing.
• A pizza and movie night.
• Friends round for a sleepover.
• More screen time.
• More phone credit.
• A cinema trip.
• A late bedtime.

As another bonus, they could be allowed to trade privileges if you are happy for them to do this.

Time to relax after the Easter Egg hunt

Once all the Easter Egg hunting is over, it’s time for you to relax. You may just want to sit back and get your feet up with a glass of your favourite drink. Or if you feel you’ve missed out on some of the fun, why not ask someone else to organise either an Easter quiz or a few party games or board games – with small eggs or other treats as prizes of course!

We hope that the above ideas will help you and your family to have the best time ever this Easter. But if you realise that your kitchen needs a bit of an update to become more family-friendly, why not also take a bit of time this Easter to browse through our gallery of kitchen pictures with a view to changing your kitchen well before Easter 2025?

Check back here soon for more home and lifestyle tips from DIY Homefit.