Creative Easter Egg Hunt Ideas
One of my favorite things about Easter is the Easter morning egg hunt. Every year my parents would make us kids go upstairs while they hid plastic eggs all over the house filled with candy and sometimes even money. While the Easter egg hunt is definitely not the purpose of Easter, it’s still a fun tradition that I’ll be continuing with my sons this year and something I’ll be doing for my husband as well! Just one of the few annual Easter activities we do every year!! I thought it would be fun to come up with some creative alternatives to the typical Easter egg hunts to put a little twist on one of my favorite traditions. A number of these would also make fun Easter party games as well!
Easter Egg Hunt Ideas for All Ages
If you want something to do other than an Easter egg hunt, make sure to check out this printable Easter games bundle, perfect for kids or adults!
#1 – Skip the Candy Easter Egg Hunt
Have kids fill Easter Eggs with slips of paper that have reasonable rewards (stay up for an extra 15 minutes, lunch date with mom) for them rather than candy/toys. Hide the eggs and the eggs that the kids find are the rewards that they get. If you need ideas for rewards, I’ve got some ideas in the photo below or you can get the printable reward options for both kids and teens here! You could also just do this in addition to the typical candy eggs. And if you’re sticking with the no-candy theme but still want to put things in eggs – check out this huge list of Easter egg filler ideas!
#2 – Easter Egg Eggstravaganza
Fill each of the eggs with a slip of paper with a silly task such as sing “Itsy Bity Spider,” name three fruits that are red, or do a handstand. This is an Easter egg hunt so make them fun. If you need task ideas, any of the tasks in this Halloween trick or treat tree game would work great! When the finder finds an egg, they can bring it back to you and do the task. After they’ve done the task, they can either pick out a piece of candy or a toy or give them coins or tickets that they can turn in for something bigger at the end of the hunt. Any of these Easter surprises would make great prizes! If you want to do something like this for older kids, put different numbers of points on the tasks. So say one egg might have a task that is name ten states and their capitols that is worth 10 points and another egg might have sing I’m a little teapot worth 5 points. Keep track of points to “buy” something at the end of the hunt.
#3 – Easter Egg Treasure Hunt
Write clues that send your kids around the house searching for the next location where they’ll find a clue (e.g., Run really fast, use your legs, this is where we keep the eggs). Or if you don’t have time to write them, here’s a printable treasure hunt you can use instead! Hide the clues in eggs and put a number on each of the eggs so they don’t accidentally skip an egg in their searching. Have the clues lead to a bigger prize at the end, one for each kid, or one that everyone can share. Or skip the egg part of it and just do this Easter scavenger hunt instead!
#4 – Golden Ticket Easter Egg Hunt
Have a Willy Wonka themed Easter Egg hunt by hiding a golden ticket for each of your kids in one egg, so if you have three kids you would have three eggs with golden tickets inside. Tell your kids that they can only find one golden ticket. You can download some free printable golden tickets here! If your kids aren’t the “open as I find it” kind of kids, you can also put a golden star or something on the outside of the egg so they know when they find a golden ticket egg. Or you can just do golden eggs! Once they find a golden ticket, they can immediately (or after the hunt is over) trade it in for a bigger prize. One word of warning – I highly recommend if you’re going to do this with kids that you put one per person. We went to an Easter hunt where there was one golden egg for the entire group of kids. I had to deal with a sobbing child who no longer wanted to hunt for Easter eggs because he saw the golden egg first but was beat to it by a girl a few years older. It was an absolute mess. Easter egg hunts are made to be fun, not build character. You could also use the golden egg later for this fun Easter dice game.
Easter Egg Hunt Ideas for Teens
The first idea on this list works great for teens if you use the teen rewards I have here! Other than that, these other ideas would work well too!
#5 – Easter Egg Relay Race
Split your kids into teams. When you say go, have the first kid from each team go search for an egg. Once they’ve found an egg, they come back and tag the next teammate who has to go find an egg. Repeat until one team has found a specified number of eggs (e.g., 20) as a team. You can also do this with younger kids, just make sure they understand that they can only find one egg and come back!
#6 – Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt
Put together a list of eggs that the kids have to find such as a striped egg, an egg with green Jelly beans, an egg with a quarter inside, etc. Or just use this free printable Easter egg scavenger hunt! Once the kids have found each item on their list, they can trade it in for a big gift (e.g., movie, toy, gift card, $10). This is a great way to still let kids search for a lot of eggs without a candy overload.
#7 – Blind Folded Easter Egg Hunt
This one gets the entire family involved! Split into teams of two – one kid and one adult per team! Blindfold the adult and have them stand in front of the kid. When you say go, the kid has to direct the blindfolded adult out to find Easter eggs. The kid has to stay where they are at and just direct the adults from across the yard. Any eggs that the adult collects can be shared by the adult and kid! Make sure not to actually hide them if you’re doing this so that kids can see where to direct the adults! You can see how this one plays out in this TikTok video!
#8 – Reverse the Roles Easter Egg Hunt
Reverse the roles this year and have the kids fill the Easter eggs with things that they want written on slips of paper (like stay up for an extra hour, skip chores for a day, etc.). Once all of the eggs are filled, have the kids hide the eggs and have parents try to find them. Any eggs that are not found in a certain time limit are the ones that kids get to keep. I recommend doing bigger rewards (in comparison to the small ones mentioned in the first idea) since adults will likely find most of the eggs!
#9 – Scrambled Easter Egg Hunt
Pick out some bigger prizes (like any of these) and print out the names of those prizes on a sheet of paper (e.g., Movie Night) with each prize printed in a different color egg. Cut out each of the letters from the prizes and put one letter in each egg that you hide. Make a poster with matching colored blank spaces for each letter in each prize (kind of like I did in this advice graduation game) so that kids know how many letters are in each prize. Have kids search for the eggs until they’ve found all of the letters for a particular prize and they win that prize! Or they can keep searching if they want to go for something else.
#10 – Perfect Patterns Egg Hunt
Before the race, buy eggs in particular patterns or designs and colors (e.g., striped, pink polka dotted, glittery) then hide the eggs and come up with a pattern to use for the game. So for instance, you might say you have to find eggs in the order of the colors in a rainbow (red, orange, yellow, blue, green, violet). Or they have to find striped, solid, striped, solid, etc. Every time they find an egg, they have to bring the egg back then go search again for the next egg in the pattern. Once they’ve found all of the eggs in the correct pattern, they are rewarded with a bigger prize.
#11 – Puzzle Egg Hunt
Break up all of the pieces to a puzzle and place pieces (1 or multiple) in eggs. Hide those eggs and when they’ve found all the eggs, they have to put the puzzle together to win a larger prize. Have the prize written on the back, like I did for this DIY Christmas gift.
#12 – teenager Easter Egg Hunt (or Adults)
This one’s just for the teens or grown ups! Fill a handful of large Easter eggs with adult prizes like cash, gift cards, lotto tickets, and other items. Hide the Easter eggs tough then send adults out on their own Easter egg hunt. You can limit people to finding one egg each (or 2-3) or just let them find as many as they’d like. You could also let people search for eggs as a prize for winning any of these Easter games!
Easter Egg Hunt Ideas for Adults
Easter egg hunts don’t have to be just for the kids! Try one of these awesome Easter egg hunt ideas for adults for a little more fun for the adults this year! This could even be something you do after the kids are in bed or while they’re enjoying the candy from their hunt! Or let the kids watch – these can often be hilarious!
Golden Ticket Winner – Do the golden ticket Easter egg hunt I mentioned above and only the person who finds the golden ticket wins a bigger prize.Gold confetti game – Speaking of gold, this confetti egg game would be hilarious! Fill some eggs with confetti and one with gold sequins. Find egg and smash them on each other – the one who finds the gold one wins. Get the full instructions here. Glow in the Dark – Do a glow in the dark Easter egg hunt. This could work for kids or adults!Spouse Easter Egg Hunt – Try this Easter egg hunt for your spouse activity to lead them to an Easter basket full of their favorite things!
More Easter Activities
If you liked these Easter egg hunts, you’ll love these other fun Easter activities!
Easter dice game – grab some Easter eggs filled with treats (or money for teens and adults), a pair of dice, and get rolling! The entire family will love this fun game! Easter candy bingo – classic bingo with a sweet twist! Instead of drawing numbers or pictures, draw candy! Easter bingo – an adorable version of everyone’s favorite bingo game with Easter images! Great for all ages! Easter Lego challenge – see how many of these Easter inspired items you can make out of Legos! Easter memory game – a fun Easter matching game that’s perfect for kids!
