Outdoor Easter Egg Hunt

Outdoor Easter Egg Hunt

Last year, I took my kids away for Easter and we went on our very first camping trip in Southern BC. One of my favourite parts of the trip was when the campground owner laid eggs all over the property and the kids found them. It was simple and incredibly fun.

Fast forward to this year, I wanted to do the same thing in my local neighbourhood park with my Hinton Outdoor Family Group. We’re made up of about 90 families that love the outdoors and want to explore our mountain backyard. I figured even if I got 20 families to come out it would be a good time.

My friend Carla joined my ad-hoc organizing committee of one and we started to collect RSVP about 2 weeks in advance of the event. We had quite a few and we realized that a little money we gained from our neighbourhood block party fund (funded by our photo radar proceeds through the Town), we could hide about 1,250 eggs.

We didn’t feel good at excluding anyone. We truly wanted it to be a grassroots community event. With a deep breath, we opened the event up to the entire community. The amazing, humbling, and slightly terrifying news was they found it just as interesting as we did, and wanted to be involved. The RSVP list grew to over 115 families that had RSVPed they were in.

The business community stepped in to help us too – between Walmart, Freson IGA, Stitch n’Print, Dr. Duncan Murray Recreation Centre, Gus’ Pizza and Parks West Mall, we were able to hide over 4,000+ eggs at Mary Reimer Park.

On Saturday morning, it started to snow. In true Albertan spirit, I don’t think that slowed anyone down. We had 6 moms that came out for Wine & Egg night and we stuffed over 3,100 eggs in one sitting. We had approx 8 people come out one hour in advance and help us hide all 4,000+ eggs.

We did short announcements & thank you’s, then counted down from 10 and they were off! We had an amazing turn out of approximately 200 families that took off into the forest, and along a trail. The Easter Bunny, of course, was there too.

The kids had a blast, and we had an outpouring of love on Facebook after the event showing off pictures, and thanking us for an amazing event.

Planning an Outdoor Easter Egg Hunt:

• Our egg math was 10 eggs to 1 child. We assumed each family had 2.5 children for estimating purposes. Most children got at least 10 eggs, if not more. We asked parents to help us to make it fair.
• Each plastic egg was filled with one prize. It could be a Recreation Centre pass, chocolate or candy.
• We asked families to bring buckets, bags or baskets to fill.
• If you returned the plastic eggs to us, we gave you another handful of chocolate eggs for your goodwill (We got the majority of our eggs back to use again for next year).
• The only equipment we needed was a small shelter, 2 garbage cans (one to collect eggs, one for garbage), a megaphone/PA, camera, a little tape, signs, can of spray paint to mark “the end”.
• We ran our event in sun, snow, or shine and let participants know that expectation on our RSVP. There is no bad weather – just bad clothing choices, after all.
• We did all our advertising via Facebook, encouraging participants to add friends & posting on our local buy, sell, trade and other local group sites.
• Older kids had to run to the middle of the egg hunt area before they could start searching (this helped to ensure they didn’t run over little people).
• 100% of our donations funded eggs – we had no other expenses.

Have you ever done an outdoor Easter egg hunt?

Looking for more great crafts, activities, and foods to celebrate Easter? Check these out.

We have some great ideas for Easter Baskets for Outdoor Kids too.