How to Plan An Easter Egg Hunt: Creative Ideas for Families

Easter is just around the corner (this year Easter Sunday is on 20th April 2025) and what better way to celebrate than by hosting a fun filled Easter Egg Hunt? Here are some creative ideas to make sure your kids have an egg-cellent time... Sorry!

Easter eggs and hunts at home with daffodils and a happy easter sign
Tips to plan your own Easter Egg Hunt

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How To Plan Your Easter Egg Hunt 


When Should You Have Your Easter Egg Hunt?

While Easter Sunday (20th April 2025) is the traditional day for egg hunts you can have yours whenever you want. With many schools going back on 22nd you might want to have yours earlier than normal this year so there is more time to enjoy any treats. 

Some families choose Good Friday for their egg hunt, especially if they're planning to travel over the Easter weekend. It's a bank holiday, so parents are usually off work, making it perfect for family activities. 

Morning is generally the most popular time for an Easter Egg Hunt for the two main reasons that excited children aren't very good at waiting and it gives more time to enjoy the treats before bed. If you are busy in the day though how about a special twilight hunt with glow in the dark eggs for older children?


Indoor vs Outdoor Easter Egg Hunt Ideas

First it can be helpful to decide whether you want to host your Easter egg hunt inside or outside. This might end up being controlled by the weather, but both experiences are a lot of fun. 

Outdoor Easter Egg Hunts

If the weather’s looking promising (we know how unpredictable the English weather can be) your garden or local park can be the perfect setting. Eggs can be hidden in trees, bushes, along fences, flower beds, anywhere really. Vary the heights to make it challenging for all and put some on the ground if you have little ones involved. Don't forget to count how many eggs you hide as you go to make sure the finders got them all. You could even mix things up by having an 'after dark Easter egg hunt'? These glow in the dark Easter eggs can be snapped open and filled with whatever you fancy and you could hang glow sticks from the trees for some extra decoration. 

Indoor Easter Egg Hunts

If the weather isn't looking great or you would rather stay inside you can still transform your home into a fun Easter adventure. Hide eggs under cushions, behind furniture and in unexpected set ups with the children'a toys, like within the rooms of dolls' houses or on the carriages of train sets.


What Should You Hide On An Easter Egg Hunt?

While the traditional idea of an Easter Egg Hunt might be to look for eggs there are plenty more options. 

Chocolate Eggs?


Rather than full sized eggs you can buy Easter egg hunt packs with small foil covered eggs from most supermarkets, but a variety of small sweet treats can be more fun and appealing for most children. For children with allergies NOMO has an Easter Egg Hunt Bundle with a variety of yummy dairy free, gluten free, egg free and nut free treats. 

You can also get wrapped marshmallow treats, lollies or jelly bean cones if you want more variety. Haribo even do Easter themed mini bags (get them here or keep an eye out in the supermarket)

Ideas for Refillable Eggs

For many years now we have used refillable plastic eggs like these. The obvious way to use the refillable eggs is to choose small chocolates, treats or stocking filler type toys and place them in the eggs. We started off with this approach, but the eggs come in different sizes and it can be difficult to find items small enough. More recently we have included messages in the eggs which can then be exchanged for the 'prizes' after the hunt. This has the benefit that they get everything from crafts to a large egg and it makes the fun last longer.

Ideas for alternatives to chocolate and sweets include:

Alternatively for older kids/teens you could do a trivia challenge where clues or riddles are hidden within the eggs, complete the puzzles to win a prize.


Easter Hunt Basket Ideas

Children will need something to collect their eggs in and while it doesn't need to be anything fancy they are something you can use year after year so it's worth making an investment initially. These bunny baskets are really cute. 

Alternatively you might want to consider decorating your own Easter basket with your children. You can normally pick up plain baskets from the supermarket, Home Bargains or B&M which you can decorate with ribbons, Easter foam stickers or paint. 


Decorating Tips and Themes

If you want to pull out all the stops why not decorate your garden or house with some fun Easter Hunt arrows or you could print these free Easter bunny foot print templates cut them out and dot them around the garden. Don't fancy the DIY approach? We have found packs of footprints in the poundshop before which we use each year. You could also get some cute Easter bunny headbands or Easter bonnets for those taking part.

Whether you are having the hunt at home or out you will need to keep the children out of the way while the Easter Bunny visits and leaves all the treats. Good ideas are for someone to take the little ones out for a walk or to the playground or you could distract them with Easter bonnet decorating.  While it might be tempting to hide them the night before this can be a bad idea if the hunt is outside as they may get eaten, go missing or get damaged. 

Finally make sure you know how many treats are being hidden so you can ensure they all found.


Siblings or Groups

How do you prevent your Easter egg hunt from ending in tears? If there is more than one child taking part you will need to ensure that all children get a chance to find eggs. One approach is to limit the number of eggs each child can collect. With 3 children, and using our plastic refillable eggs, we allocate different colour eggs for for each child. This allows us to tailor the contents for each child.

And Go...

When all the eggs and treats are hidden it is time to begin.  Enjoy watching the children search for their Easter surprises and hope they will share a few of them with you. 


What to do with the leftover eggs

In our house there is no such thing as 'left over eggs' however if you find yourself with a surplus of chocolate you could use it to make these well loved Easter treats, Chocolate nest cakes or Easter Bark.


Whether you choose to host your Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday morning or opt for a twilight hunt with glow-in-the-dark eggs the evening before, the most important thing is creating memories with your family. If you're looking for more Easter activities, why not combine your hunt with a visit to one of the many Easter themed days out in Essex.  And remember, chocolate eggs hidden in Essex gardens have been known to disappear rather quickly, whether that's down to excited children or our local wildlife remains a mystery.

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