14 Easter Egg Hunt Ideas For Toddlers That Go Beyond Yelling, “Find Them!”

This is dead simple. Buy several sizes of plastic eggs and stack them one inside the other. It will take them forever to get apart, and by the time they get to the very center (where you should obviously hide a Cadbury mini egg), they will be so happy. Toddlers are an easy crowd.

Use the Easter Egg Hunt checklist featured on A Mom’s Take or make your own. The point is to borrow elements of the popular toddler game “I Spy” to make your egg hunt longer lasting and more engaging. Toddlers will need an adult’s help reading the instructions, but they are sure to enjoy checking boxes as they look for different kinds of animals, flowers, and colored eggs. This approach also turns an egg hunt into less of a free-for-all and more of a focused, deliberate activity.

Instead of fretting over whether to fill the eggs with candy or skip sugary treats entirely, let your kids decide. The Life As Mom blog has a printable system of tokens (they call them yokes) to hide in plastic eggs. Once kids have collected their share of eggs, they can add up their tokens (a bonus counting exercise for toddlers) and decide what prizes to redeem them for. From one yolk for a piece of candy to five for a bigger prize like a beach ball, kids will have to balance their desire for candy with options for fewer, more durable treats. You could also use pennies or tickets instead of the printables to serve as tokens.

“Plant” Easter eggs in a bowl of chocolate pudding. Place in the fridge overnight. (Bunnies have fur and like the cold. It’s a stretch, but they’re toddlers.) The next day, place Peeps bunnies above where the eggs were (that you removed), growing out of the pudding. And there you have it: magic bunny eggs!

Fill a kiddie pool with a single layer of Easter eggs. They have to find the eggs with treats in them by opening all the eggs. Having done this a time or two myself, I will tell you that the older the toddlers get, the more eggs you’ll need if you want to have a pint of beer while they’re tending to their eggs.

This one is great for kids learning their colors right now. Give them a basket full of eggs, and have them separate them by color and then by size. For all the pairs they find, they get a prize. Bonus points for knowing the colors, and learning the sizes big, medium, and small.

Make a pile of Jell-O eggs and let your little ones go to town with the whipped cream and fruit topping. It makes for a cute picture for the ‘gram.

If you’re a Potterhead, try making a Marauder’s-style treasure map of where the Easter eggs might be hidden. Make it meandering, but not so dense that you lose your little one’s interest.

Sometimes you are limited on the number of eggs you can hide or the places you can hide them. Turn the Easter egg hunt into a scavenger hunt. Strategically place clues written on egg-shaped paper around your house, with each one leading to the next. At the end, your toddlers will find their prizes.

Author and native Louisianan Ken Wheaton explains the tradition of egg “pacquing,” or more phonetically “egg pocking,” for The Takeout. Basically, tradition dictates that a pair of competitors takes a raw — albeit, often decorated — egg and they tap them nose first to each other, and the person whose egg cracks, loses, and the last person with an uncracked egg wins. Toddlers love this game because it’s so dang messy, so maybe don’t play it inside.

Who says you have to hunt for Easter eggs during an egg hunt? Go against the norm this year and get creative. Studio DIY has a sweet and simple DIY for making bunny lollipops, and your toddlers may enjoy hunting for cute bunnies instead of a boring plain egg. Plus they can easily take the bunny apart themselves and eat the lollipop. You need lollipops, tissue paper, twine, white and pink card stock, a hot glue gun, and a pair of scissors.

If you’re working with toddlers on the younger end of toddler-dom, then this idea is pretty perfect. No longer worry about the missing eggs at the end of a toddler egg hunt and the fear of running them over with the lawn mower a week later. The Celebrations at Home blog recommends tying pastel balloons to each of the eggs and placing them around the yard. Not only will it look festive and beautiful, but it will make for an easier time for the toddlers.

Kids love balloons anyway, so why not incorporate their infatuation into an Easter egg hunt? You’ll need balloons, eggs, ribbon, and potentially a small helium balloon tank. However, you could always go to Dollar General or Publix and ask if they can blow up some balloons for you if you don’t want to spend the money on a helium tank. But think of the possibilities you’ll have if you own one!

Not only does this craft make finding Easter eggs fun and easier for toddlers, but these adorable painted wood slice easter eggs from A Night Owl would make gorgeously festive decor for your home. Whether you want the eggs to actually look like painted Easter eggs or you want to make it a family craft with the kiddos and have them paint the eggs, this “egg hunt” has multiple festive elements of fun. You need wood slices, chalk paint, paintbrushes, small hoop eye pins, and decorative ribbon, per the website.

Hopefully it’s not brutally hot where you live on Easter Sunday, but these Play-Doh Surprise Eggs from The Imagination Tree provide layers of fun. Not only does your toddler get to hunt the eggs, but then they get sensory experiences by having to peel back the Play-Doh to reveal the egg, then opening the plastic egg, and using the objects inside to stick back into the Play-Doh for playtime. Sounds like a fun way to spend the afternoon to me. If your toddler is still at the putting-everything-in-their-mouth stage, just be sure to provide supervision at all times, or perhaps skip this egg hunt idea.