Before I start this blog post let me be clear about a couple of things.
1. I am insanely jealous of Bible Belt weather this time of year.
2. I am not a big fan of children killing each other in the craziness we call egg hunts.
Why am I jealous of the Bible Belt this time of the year? Well, most often when it’s time to do an Easter egg hunt this is what it looks like outside our church. (No exaggeration as this photo was taken Easter 3 years ago)
We were looking for a way to do an Easter egg alternative and one of the women on our team Lori Buck came up with a brilliant idea. Do an Easter egg hunt indoors. I have to admit my chaos meter was going crazy. She began to explain her idea and it was brilliant.
Here is what it looks like.
1. Buy foam eggs online or at Hobby Lobby
2. Use “Blue Painters Tape” to tape said eggs to the wall.
3. Hide them in a specific room or all over your kids environment.
(Here is what it looked like taped to the wall)
4. Create a starting point and supply maps of the locations you want the kids to search for the eggs.
5. Provide the maps and pens
6. Do not allow kids to do this on their own – by forcing parents to help you create a shared experience with parent and child.
7. Have the parents and kids search for the eggs stuck to the walls once the egg is located circle the part on the map where the egg is located.
8. Once finished return the map for a prize. (We did a 3 tiered prize system based on how many eggs the kids found.) All the kids walked away with candy.
Here is what I loved about it.
1. It was FAR CALMER than any egg hunt I have ever been to.
2. Parents and kids did it together. Families were working together to find these eggs hidden all over the walls. Kids loved it and parents loved as much or more than their kids.
3. It was different, fun, orderly and just enough crazy to be fun.
4. Because we leveraged the parents we needed only a couple of volunteers.
We have done this event for 4 years now. Here are some of my thoughts. I love how it gives the parents the keys to the event. It’s not something the bring their kids to. It’s an event they all participate in. We do it on Palm Sunday to maximize attendance for two weeks, not just one. We invite everyone back for Easter services the following week. If the weather was better we may do the helicopter drop, but our poor weather forced us to create an event that pushes the family to do something fun together. This might be late for this year but try it out next year you might like it.
I LOVE this idea. I don’t like the pushing and shoving and general grabbiness of the traditional Easter Egg hunt. Thanks Sam.
Bonnie totally with you. You should try this we LOVED it.
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I’m in the Bible belt, and we’re having a blasted cold snap. Freeze warning tonight.
But, we’re better off (weather-wise) than you are, I suppose.
Love this idea! We’ve never done a hunt for the “big kids” – our city does a big event right outside our doors on the Sat. before Easter, and since we are downtown, we really don’t have an outdoor space. We’ve done indoor family scavenger hunts before, but this is a new twist!
And, yes, the south is freezing today too!
Ha. I guess I am just jealous. Every easer we have either snow or mud is so unfair.
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I just read this post and I just had to say that this is what we did this year! We just moved into our own building (after years of renting from different places) and the kids have a beautiful but small space. Outside is just a parking lot save small patches of dirt or thorny shrubbery. So we had our hunt indoors and stuck foam and paper eggs on the walls. We didn’t do a tier prize system though. Everyone got the same gift bag of candy. So in truth, there’s no point of finding a lot of the paper eggs. I thought the kids would figure that out, but they didn’t 😀 I’m not sure if we can fool them next year, so I’ll keep that tier system in mind.
Question about your egg hunt:
Were the maps for them to write the locations of the eggs that they found, or were they used to lead them to the eggs? If it was to lead them to the eggs, how did they indicate that they found the one you were leading them to?
Thanks! Love the idea!
Bethany,
We had a master map with all the egg locations marked on them. We gave blank maps to parents to works as a family to identify as many eggs as possible they would circle the place on the map they found an egg. When they felt they had found them all they would turn in their map to the staff with a master copy of the map. The staff would let them know how many eggs they had yet to find. The family could continue looking. Once they were done looking they got a prize based on how many eggs they found in the end.
How did you publicize this event? What did you call it to inform people of this unique way of having an Egg Hunt? I love the idea, btw!
What a great idea!
Thanks! Wish I could say it was mine. One of my team came up with it she is massively more creative than I ever could be.
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Well Sam, we are trying this for the first time tomorrow. Thank you to you and your team for the encouragement and help in getting it up and running.
Awesome Jeremy let me know how it works out for you.
Sounds like a great idea.
I was thinking we could show a PowerPoint or something similar of the “resurrection eggs” prior to the egg hunt….always like an opportunity to share the gospel.
Could you share a copy of your empty map….and your master map?
We do not have designated area for kids…but I was thinking we could use different class rooms.
Vicki you totally could do that in each room. Send me an email to [email protected] and I’ll get you copies of all our blank maps.
Really love this idea!! Thanks for sharing!
Praying for God’s love and power to be present in huge ways through ministries all over the world over the next few weeks as we tell of His powerful death and resurrection to a world in desperate need of hope!
Blessings!
Thanks Lisa!