It was a few years ago, when my oldest two kiddos were around 8 & 10 and it seemed that the traditional Easter Egg Hunt was really geared toward toddlers and perhaps the super aggressive kid who could quickly collect the entire caboodle. Yeah, we all know a kid like that! I wanted something different! I knew we could still make it fun for my middle age kids, and happily what we dreamed up has been a blast and has entertained middle age, tweens and teens for years! Truly Easter egg hunts in the dark is one of our favorite traditions!
The concept is super simple. You still create an area where you hide eggs (we do plastic eggs filled with various chocolate and candies, although when I was a kid in Glendora, California, the local Parks dyed and hid hard boiled eggs! Isn’t that wild?) We designate an area of the house where we hide more than 100 eggs in the evening. After we hide all the eggs, we turn off every single light, including the night lights! Then we gather the waiting kiddos and hand each of them a flashlight which we have tested and made sure they are ready. Then the fun begins!
It is a truly a frantic squeal fest!! Picture a sense of palpable urgency because of course you want to find as many eggs as possible before your brother or sister, however, you also realize you are walking in the dark with just a small beam of light. So. much. Fun! You hurry to collect as many eggs as you can find, while hearing your siblings giggle and gasp when they find another. All of this in the dark!
My family is quite tall, so my husband likes to hide eggs in tall and unexpected places like light fixtures and the top of ceiling fans, although we have some scattered on the ground, behind plants or pillows in wonderful and random places!! We do not like to make it too easy and this makes it fun! We decided long ago to never include bedrooms in the hunt, because of the frenzied searching nature, so we keep to family rooms, living rooms, halls and the like. Invariably, we will find a random Easter Egg a month or two later. Good hiding place Dad!
Some adjustments that we have made over time have been to make 2 separate places for the varying ages. A 5 year old shouldn’t have to compete for candy with a 12 year old. Another way to handle the age difference is to let the younger kids start the hunt first by a minute or two. We have found with our kiddos that there are varying levels of aggression in activities like this between all ages and genders. You can have a seriously fast and aggressive 6 year old girl who trumps your passive 13 year old boy, so just do your best! Life doesn’t tend to be fair, but it can be fun! So you get to decide how to handle the fun for your team! 🙂
Somewhere along the way we added a couple of eggs that had a $1 or $5 bill. All of this just adds to the fun! At the end, we turn on the lights and the kids dump out their eggs and count up their new treasure. It’s just a few weeks until we have our hunt this year. I can’t wait–we LOVE it! May you have a fun and memorable time with your cute team for Easter! Happy Spring!
