Kids, teens, and adults will absolutely love these fun and creative Easter egg hunt ideas! Whether you use one of these ideas to replace or just add to your traditional Easter egg hunt, it’s guaranteed to be fun!
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. The annual Easter egg hunt is an Easter tradition I still love to do this day!
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 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
Havekids 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).
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 – Easter Egg Hunt with Clues
If you don’t want to do a scavenger hunt style (find one clue then keep finding the next ones) talked about above, try this one instead.
Hide a bunch of eggs that go along with these free printable Easter egg hunt clues. It makes it a lot easier to hide eggs when you have locations for them!
Then instead of just having kids run around looking for eggs, have them pick a clue out of a basket and have to find that egg before they move onto the next one.
Or make it a race by reading a clue out for everyone and whoever finds it first, keeps the egg and prize inside!
#5 – 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!
#6 – 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. Then everyone gets their own basket of goodies!
You can also do this with younger kids, just make sure they understand that they can only find one egg and come back!
#7 – 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.
#8 – 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.
This is a great way to do an adult Easter egg hunt without leaving out the kids! You can play with family members or play with friends – either way is hilarious!
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!
#9 – 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!
#10 – 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.
#11 – 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.
#12 – 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.
#13 – Token Egg Hunt
Switch things up and instead of putting candy (or other Easter egg fillers) into eggs, put tokens instead. I like to do 1-5 tokens so that the number of tokens kids get is random, not based on how many eggs they find.
Then let them use the tokens they find to trade for things – Chuck E Cheese ticket style! We did this with our kids and they loved walking away with “prizes” instead of just a whole bunch of little pieces of candy.
#15 – Egg Toss Egg Hunt
Any of these three egg toss game ideas work great as part of an Easter egg hunt because it’s all about collecting as many Easter eggs as possible! There are three different variations you can choose from:
- Towel Toss – parents toss eggs using a beach towel for kids to catch (or grab from the ground).
- Bouncing Eggs – parents bounce eggs on a sheet for kids to grab, kind of like Hungry Hungry Hippos.
- Easter Egg 500 – one of the most fun Easter games where you have to try to collect eggs that are tossed in the air!
#16 – Easter Bunny Hunt
Combine your typical Easter egg hunt with this Easter bunny hunt where you hide bunnies in random eggs. Then when people open up eggs and find those bunnies inside, they the prizes associated with the bunny they found!
#17 – Easter Egg Hunt Ideas for Teens
Teens love to text so they will absolutely love this texting Easter egg hunt idea! Two sets of teens in different houses have to text back and forth to help each other find their own Easter baskets and clues!
We did this with my nieces and nephews, and it was so fun with the older children and teens! Get all the details plus 25+ clues for these Easter egg hunt ideas for teens here. It’s a fun way to get teens actually engaged and having fun!
#18 – Big Prize Easter Egg Hunt
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. Or one of these Easter egg fillers for adults!
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!
indoor Easter egg Hunts
The next three egg hunts are all designed specifically to be indoor Easter egg hunts because they are setup in various rooms in a house or indoor locations.
#19 – Room to Room
Hide eggs in specific rooms and have kids (or any age) pick out the name of the room they have to search in first. When they get back, they can choose another room and continue hunting. Keep going until all of the eggs have been found,
#20 – Last Egg Standing
This egg hunt is kind of like a combination egg hunt and a game of musical chairs, minus the music. And the chairs.
The general idea is that you hide eggs in particular rooms in the house and people playing have to all search in one room to find an egg. If you don’t find an egg, you’re out. Everyone else moves onto the next room. Keep going until until just two people are hunting and the person who finds the eggs wins!
#21 – Around the House Easter Egg Hunt
This is another Easter egg hunt that requires you to hide eggs in different rooms but in this hilarious hunt, everyone will start finding eggs in one room then as they find an egg in that room, they move to the next, continuing around the house. The person to find an egg first in the last room wins!
You can get all of the rules for these three indoor Easter egg hunts in our post on indoor egg hunts!
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! They’re creative ideas that work just for the kids at hearts.
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!
#22 – Golden Ticket Winner
Do the golden ticket Easter egg hunt I mentioned above and only the person who finds the golden ticket (aka special eggs) wins a bigger prize. Or small prizes, whatever works with your budget. I like to do this with gold prizes for the winners!
#23 – Scrambled Egg Hunt
In the adult version of this game, you’ll hide the letters to scrambled up prizes in eggs hidden around the yard (or an area). And then the fun begins as teens and adults race to be the first one to find all the letters in one of the prizes or the one to find the coveted last letter in a word to claim the prize!
Get all of the instructions for these two fun scrambled egg hunt ideas for adults! We did these with my family, and they were a blast!
#24 – Raffle Ticket Eggs
Hide raffle tickets in eggs that adults can find then raffle off prizes at the end! The more eggs they find with adult tickets inside, the more chances they have to win!
#25 – Easter Trivia Hunt
This is kind of like the adult version of the Easter egg-stravaganza hunt for kids above! Hide Easter trivia questions inside eggs and when adults find them and bring them back, they have to answer the trivia question correctly to win whatever the prize may be. If they get it wrong, they toss it back out for someone else to try and answer!
You could do the same thing with these Easter would you rather questions or just mix them in with the trivia!
#26 – Egg Roll
Toss filled eggs all over the yard, give everyone a kitchen utensil of some sort, and let the hunt begin! Everyone has to run out and use their kitchen utensil to roll eggs they find (one at a time) back to their designated spot in the yard! We did this with the teens and older this year, and it was so funny to watch!
I put this one under my list of Easter egg hunts for adults because younger kids can struggle with this, but this worked great for our tweens and older!
#27 – Hard-boiled egg hunt
Hide a bunch of hard-boiled eggs and real eggs (raw ones) in an open area. When an adult finds an egg, they have to come back and crack it (you could do cracking it on their head if you want to get risky) open. If it’s hard-boiled, they win a prize. If it’s raw, they have to clean it up before hunting again.
This doesn’t have to be just an adult egg hunt, you’ll just want to make sure people know ahead of time what they’re getting themselves into.
#28 – 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.
#29 – Glow in the Dark
Do a glow in the dark Easter egg hunt. This could work for kids or adults! This would be a really fun neighbor hunt too since you’ll need the right place with a good amount of space for the dark hunt!
#30 – 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! If you need ideas, I’ve got tons of Easter basket ideas for adults!
Easter Egg Hunt FAQs
How do you organize an Easter egg hunt?
Plan a day and a time that you’ll do the hunt. A little before that time, hide plastic Easter eggs full of treats and prizes. When you’re ready for the hunt to begin, explain the rules or guidelines of the hunt to everyone then let everyone hunt for any eggs they can find!
How do you make an Easter egg hunt more fun?
There are so many ways to make an Easter egg hunt more fun – try switching up what goes in the eggs, try one of the Easter egg scavenger hunts explained in this post, try hunting in teams, doing relays, or making the hunt a bit more challenging by assigning people to particular colors or patterns! Get creative with different Easter egg hunt ideas!
How many eggs do you need for an Easter egg hunt?
The number of eggs you’ll need depends on how many people will be hunting and how many eggs you want them to find. I typically like to hide between 15-20 eggs for each kid if there are less than 10 kids searching. More than that, and I drop it down to 10 eggs per child.
What to put in Easter eggs that is not candy?
You can put all sorts of things in Easter eggs that are not candy. Put rewards like extra screen time and skipping chores, little prizes or trinkets, money, coupons for things, or even tokens to trade up for a larger prize in an Easter egg store. I have an entire post of Easter egg fillers if you need more ideas!
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!
