How to do an Easter egg hunt for toddlers, kids and teens

Easter is almost here and with it comes the great tradition of doing an Easter egg hunt! Wondering how to do an Easter egg hunt? We’ve got tips for organising one for children of all ages!

How my family does egg hunts

When my children were smaller, I would enjoy planting mini wrapped chocolate eggs all over the house and garden – sometimes we were on holiday at Easter – I remember staging an Easter egg hunt in a Butlins chalet once! But the tradition was that every year my kids would receive a small basket or bucket to put their finds in and I’d let them run loose to discover what I’d hidden a few hours before!

Every family has their traditions and we all do Easter egg hunts differently, so I asked some of our BritMums writers for their tips on running the perfect Easter egg hunt!

Check out these handy tips from other experienced mums!

Easter egg hunts for toddlers and young children

We leave fun clues written on little cardboard eggs around the house or garden to help lead them to the actual eggs – Sarah Stockley, Kippers and Curtains
Ours are just hidden by the Easter bunny and searched for with a collection basket. Bunny likes to bring crafty Easter themed things to make too and something nature inspired. We also searched for shark egg cases at the beach last year.- Lucy Anne Brown, Kids of the Wild
Make an Easter bonnet to wear while you hunt! – Julie Wigg, Pondering Parenthood
Make the clues rhyme so that they are catchy and fun to read – you can visit rhyming websites to help you write them. Also, for older kids, they could collect letters that end up spelling out a word of where the chocolate eggs are hidden (an anagram) …just to make it a bit trickier for them! – Lauretta Wright, Home and Horizon
If you’re hunting in a small space, combine the egg hunt with music freeze tag — they can only run around and look while the music’s going. When you pause the music, they have to stop and freeze in place. Turns it all into more of a game!

How to make Easter egg hunts fun for older kids and teens

Do a proper ‘scavenger hunt’, by hiding riddles in really tricky places that kids have to work out before they can find the next clue then the next. The challenge makes it fun! – Jennifer Howze, Jenography.net
Instead of hiding lots of little treats, get one of the bigger chocolate eggs — make all the hunt lead up to the big treat!
In the plastic refillable eggs you can put small items they would like — earrings and necklaces, a code for an Xbox purchase, a rolled up £10 note, etc
The team at BritMums sometimes substitutes another type of gift for the chocolate egg, such as clothing they’ve been wanting
Get teens involved in hiding eggs for younger siblings or other kids. They love being in charge of the fun!

How to keep Easter egg hunts fair

My own best tip would be to place two mini eggs in each location (or however many children you have – I have two) so that when one child discovers the egg, there is a treat there for both of them. This keeps it ‘fair’.
Give each child a colour so they only have to find eggs of that colour that way they get to keep what they find and its harder to look for just their colours – Katie Davis, Mummy in a Tutu
Agree with the children before they start to split the eggs found equally otherwise one child will have a basket full, leaving others with only a few – Clare Nicholas, This Mummy’s Always Write

Do you have any great tips for organising an Easter Egg Hunt? Share with us in the comments!

Pin it for later: How to do an Easter Egg Hunt on Pinterest

More great Easter ideas for families

About Nadine Hill

Nadine is a marketer, digital creator and ex BritMums Editor who started blogging in the mid 2000's whilst working from home around her young family. Her blog JuggleMum won an award for video and covered many lifestyle subjects from fashion to food to entrepreneurship whilst also inspiring content creation for her YouTube channel @MrsNadineHill. Nadine loves hanging out with her teenage children who keep her (mostly) current - although apparently no-one says 'hanging out' any more! When she's not with her family she's at the gym or in a coffee house in Yorkshire somewhere (she's been to most of them!) - photographing her cappuccino for the grid. You can find Nadine on Twitter and Instagram as @Businessmum