Bring the Fun

BY JESS WEISCHEDEL

Sometimesthe weather doesn’t allow for a traditional Easter egg hunt outside. Do not let that stop you! Here are some ways to bring the fun indoors. Easter doesn’t have to be the only time to enjoy these unique egg hunts for kids inside your house. Come up with your own ideas to incorporate into the ones below and send your children on an adventure.

Treasure Map Egg Hunt

Hide one egg in each room of your house, then draw a treasure map that will help your child find them. Mark each egg on the map with a number, and tell them they need to find them in order. Put together an Easter basket full of goodies and hide this in another room. This will be the “treasure” at the end, but they need to find all of the eggs in order before they can hunt for the treasure. Show the room on the map where the Easter basket prize is by using a star or an “X” to mark the spot where the treasure is “buried”. Explain to the kids that they must find one at a time in the order of the numbers on the map and enjoy the fun as they work their way through the rooms and work together to get to the treasure. If they start to argue or if they need help with finding the egg, gently guide them by giving them hints or telling them if they are getting “hotter” or “colder”. If your kids need help keeping track of the eggs they have found, give them a marker to cross off each room they discovered the egg in. When all the eggs have been found and each room has been crossed out, the treasure can be found! Once they find it, celebrate with them, and let them enjoy all of their goodies together and feel a sense of achievement.

Puzzle Pieces Hunt

Find a puzzle with pieces that will fit inside the eggs, then put it together yourself to make sure all of the pieces are accounted for.

Place 2-3 pieces inside of each egg, making sure the pieces inside connect with the others in the same egg. Tell your kids they can only find one egg at a time, and that the pieces inside need to be connected before they can find the next egg. The puzzle has to be all completed in order to win the prize, or move on to the next “level”. This is a great way for children to work together in finding the eggs and putting the pieces together as they go. You can reward them with something special or let them move on to another egg hunt as another level of several egg hunt games with a bigger prize at the very end.

Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt

Create a list of items to hide in the eggs, such as small toys, temporary tattoos, neat rocks, stickers, candy, coins, or other trinkets. Draw a checkbox next to each item and assign an egg color to each child if more than one is going to be playing. Fill the eggs and make sure you hide them where the kids can access them, yet still feel challenged by the search. Let your kids know what color eggs they need to look for, and how to track their progress. You can give each child their own list, or make a separate checkbox for each one. You could also give them each an assigned color marker to keep track of who is finding which item on the list. Once all of the items are found, you can give them a group reward or name the winner as the first one to finish finding all of the items.

Spelling Scramble Egg Hunt

Choose a prize for your kids that you can use as the word to scramble and hide inside the eggs. For example, if you want to give your child a cupcake as the reward for the hunt, you can write each letter of the word, “cupcake”, on small pieces of paper and hide them in 7 separate eggs. Hide them around the house so that the word will be scrambled when your child has all the pieces of paper from the eggs they find. Once your child guesses the correct word and has all of the letters in order, present them with their prize and embrace the moment as they enjoy!

Any of these egg hunts can be done outside as well if you adjust the details based on the child’s ability and the space available. Remember the most important thing is to have fun and give your children an experience to smile about.