Take the mad out of scramble

Most Easter egg hunts go like this: The kids line up, someone shouts “Go!” and then it’s over before you can capture that perfect Kodak moment.

Consider new ideas to slow things down or add a new twist to this year’s hunt. Various Web sites, including www.celebrating-easter.com and www.purpletrail.com/partytrail/holiday_parties/easter, offer a few possibilities:

Color code the eggs according to age. Get 2- to 4-year-olds looking for blue eggs while those 5 to 7 search for green, and so on. Or, for smaller groups, color code by child so all get an equal number of eggs.

Easter egg hunt with a message. Have a regular egg hunt, but in 12 plastic eggs, put a number and a Scripture passage telling a part of the Easter Story. Then after the kids find the eggs and are sitting together, call out the numbers one by one and have each child read his or her passage. This lets the kids tell the story of Easter.

Hidden basket/spider web hunt. While the kids are asleep, hide their Easter baskets in the house. Tie one end of a very long string to each basket. Loop the string throughout the whole house, around and over and under furniture — so it looks like a huge tangled spider web — eventually leading to the child’s room. Tie the other end of the string to the doorknob of the child’s room. When the child comes out of the room on Easter morning, she or he can follow the string throughout the house to find the right basket.

Puzzle treasure hunt. For this hunt, you need a jigsaw puzzle (not more than 25 pieces, with each piece small enough to fit inside an egg). You start by putting the puzzle together. Then flip it over and write a clue across the back that points to the treasure. Take the puzzle apart and put one or two pieces in each egg. Then hide the eggs for the hunt. The children will have to find all of the eggs and put the puzzle together in order to figure out where the treasure is.

Hidden Easter basket clues. When your children get up on Easter morning, give them a plastic egg with a clue inside. This should lead them to another plastic egg, which leads to another and so on, until finally leading them to their Easter basket. Use up to about a dozen eggs per child.

Odd or even hunt. For this game, write an odd or even number on each egg. When the kids are lined up to start the egg hunt, give each an odd or even number assignment. They can collect only the eggs that fit their assignment. This can be used to “handicap” the Easter egg hunt. The harder eggs to find can be “odd” and assigned to the older children.

Spell it out egg hunt. Use a permanent marker to write a different letter on each egg. Then have the kids create words with the eggs they’ve found. The kid with the most words wins a prize.

Checklist egg hunt. For large Easter egg hunts, give each child a basket with a checklist and pencil in it and instruct the child to find only what is on his or her checklist — otherwise, someone else will be without enough. You can have a grand prize, too, for the child who is first to complete the assigned checklist. The checklists could look something like this:

___Find 2 blue eggs

___Find 3 pink eggs

___Find 1 yellow egg

___Find 2 orange eggs

___Find 4 purple eggs

___Find 3 green eggs

Egg piñatas: To assemble piñata eggs, cut long strings of ribbon. Open a plastic egg and put candy inside. Then put the middle section of the ribbon inside the egg and close the egg. The egg should now have two pieces of ribbon hanging out of it. Use one end of the ribbon to attach it to a tree branch or ceiling. Be sure that the ribbon is long enough so that the children can reach it. The kids can then pull on the ribbon and the candy will fall out.

Math Easter egg hunt. Tuck a slip of paper with a number on it with the candy you place inside plastic eggs, and hide them. After they’re all found, total up the numbers in each child’s egg. The one with the highest total number wins a prize. (For younger children, use numbers 1 through 5; make the numbers larger for older children.)

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