A quick-footed rabbit who leaves a scrumptious trail of eggs in his wake? Now where on earth did that spring up from? Well, the Easter Bunny can be traced back to 17th-century German folklore, when the Easter Hare left brightly painted eggs in nests carefully laid out by children.
These days, you don’t need to leave a nest out in the garden (although that sounds fun!) but there are many fun and simple ways or organising a delightful egg hunt…
Here's our guide to organising an Easter egg hunt
at home or in the garden
- For younger children, it’s probably best to keep it simple, with eggs scattered about your home or garden in fairly obvious places.
- With more than one child, use different coloured eggs for each child to help prevent one eagle-eyed hunter from rooting out all the eggs.
- Having an Easter egg checklist can help keep things fair with children given a quota of, say, four blue eggs, three green eggs, two red eggs.
- Or, if you want to ensure no one eats their eggs before they’ve all been gathered, use mini foil-wrapped eggs, dyed, painted or plastic eggs that can then be exchanged for a chocolate prize at the end.
- A treasure hunt-style trail is great for garden egg hunts – with written clues and mini eggs leading to a grand chocolate egg prize – and, works well for older children. Rhyming the clues is fun. You could start with something like: “To solve this clue you’ll need sharp eyes, Seek out blue eggs near Daddy’s ties.”Then offer ideas with more than one possibility to send children hunting in different directions. For example, a reference to a basket could be the laundry basket, a shopping basket or even a basketball hoop.
- Look for ready made egg hunt kits (see our edit below) to really make it simple – many include arrows, signs and decorations that can be used as clues. Great for toddlers and pre-schoolers.
